When I was a kid, I absolutely loved joke books. I loved reading jokes and telling them to my friends, although I usually forgot them almost as quickly as I read them. Morgan likes reading and telling jokes too, and although she normally gets them from websites and phone apps, when I ran across this book of jokes I just had to pick it up for her.
First of all, it’s the “ultimate” joke book. If you’re only going to own one, it might as well be the ultimate one, right? Also on the cover, the book guarantees laughs for every day. How can you go wrong for only $1.99?
Very, very wrong.
Excited about my find, I opened the book up to a random page and read the first joke on the page.
“You know,” said the farmer to his wife, “with all the additives they’re putting our milk these days, don’t you reckon it makes old Bessie feel right deficient?”
I flipped back a page.
The chicken yard was thrown into a clucking fright when farmboys at play accidentally kicked a football near the coop. After the ball had been retrieved and the flock had calmed down, one hen turned to another. “Now that,” she said, “was what I call an egg.”
Noticing a farming trend, I realized the jokes were organized by topic. Here’s one under “crime”:
A new prisoner was shown to a cell he was to share with a crusty old lifer. “How long’s your sentence?” was the veteran’s first question. “Well, thirty years–but I’m up for parole in ten,” said the rookie. “Then I get the bunk nearest to the door,” said the vet. My parole comes up in only six years.”
Hey, here’s a section on lawyers. Surely there’s a funny lawyer joke in here, right?
“I need a criminal lawyer,” a stranger announced in a small-town barbershop. “Know where I might find one around here? “Well, Lawyer Blake and Lawyer Black are obvious choices. There are a couple others we suspect, if Blake and Black are both too busy to take your case.”
Relationships?
Two friends were discussing a mutual acquaintance. “I don’t think she’s really antisocial,” said one. “Nah,” said the other, “she just despises humans.”
For the first time in my life, I felt horribly ripped off after spending $1.99 on something.
Toward the back, I found the jokes about school.
“How was your first day of school?” Mother asked Wanda. “Tell me all about it.” “It was a complete waste of time,” said Wanda. “I’m dropping out.” “Oh no! What went wrong?” “I just don’t see any point to it. I still can’t read. Can’t write. And I’m not allowed to say anything to anybody.”
Is… that a joke? Is that a guaranteed laugh that belongs in not just any joke book, but the ULTIMATE joke book?
ULTIMATE: the best achievable or imaginable of its kind. (dictionary.com)
Go get your jokes from the internet, kids. Print is dead.
If a thousand monkeys typed for a thousand years, they’d eventually write this joke book.
I used to love joke books as a kid too. In fact, any time we took a family trip to the mall, they’d run off to Sears or something and I’d run off to Waldenbooks and park myself in front of the joke book section to pass the time.
Here is the book I read as a kid: 101 Elephant Jokes https://www.amazon.com/101-Elephant-Jokes-Robert-Blake/dp/B000T8M1KK
I still remember a few of the jokes:
How do you stop a herd of elephants from charging? Take away their credit cards.
How do you get down from an elephant? You don’t get down from an elephant! You get down from a duck? (I did not get this joke for a long time. To add to the confusion, the book had a picture of a giant duck with a person standing on the duck looking at a ladder leaned against the duck).
Obviously that book made an impression on me since I still remember it forty years later.