Transcribed Text:

“So there was a little boy who lived with his mom. The mom loved the little kid, they got along pretty well and uh…for the kid’s fifth birthday, she got him a brand new shiny red tricycle. He loved it, it was the best gift he had ever gotten. And um..she told him, ‘now you can ride that tricycle in the yard, and in the driveway, but don’t go out on the sidewalk with that, I want you staying in the house!’ (he gestures his hand at an imaginary child, mimicking the mother’s actions). And the kid goes ‘ok..’ and he spends the day riding it around all around the yard, and all around the yard, but he just really wants to go out onto the sidewalk. And he does. He goes out into the sidewalk and gets run over by a Great Dane and breaks his leg. And..so, they take him to the hospital and he gets a cast on the leg and he’s like ‘aww..’ and the mother says ‘I told you, don’t go out on the sidewalk.’ And as they come back from the hospital, they pass by a monastery. uh..like for monks. And they, they’re walking past the monastery, or hobbling in his case, and they uh, the monk outside says ‘please, stay with us tonight, and you will be completely healed.’ And they feel something is right about this, and they do stay. And the monk says, you can stay, you’ll be healed, but you can’t ask me about the noise you will hear in the middle of the night. ‘ok…’ and so they stay, and hear a strange noise in the middle of the noise. But when they wake up, he is completely healed. So they’re like ‘ok, fine by me! Completely healed!’ Years go by, he’s forgotten this by now and he turns ten. And his mom gets him a brand new shiny red bicycle. It’s awesome, best bike, like a shwinn cruiser, delightful bike. She says ‘you can ride it all around the house, all around the yard,all around the driveway and up and down the sidewalk as much as you want, but just don’t cross the street and don’t go into the street.’ And he’s like ‘ok’ and he spends the day riding all around the block and all up and down his driveway, but he just wants to go out into the street. So he goes out into the street and gets hit by a door of a smart car as it opens and breaks his leg. And so, they take him to the hospital and the mom goes ‘come on, I told you! Don’t do that!’ and he’s like ‘I knooow.’ And as they’re coming back from the hospital, they pass by the monastery again and the monk says the same thing. ‘If you stay here tonight, you will be completely healed, just do not ask about the noise.’ And they do, and he’s completely healed. But that noise, they just have to know. It’s a noise, a noise unlike anything you’ve ever heard..It’s-it’s indescribable what this noise is. But again, they pay it no mind,  because he was completely healed. Now, years and years and years go by from that, and it’s, it’s the kids twentieth birthday. He’s away from home now, but his mom gets him a brand new shiny red corvet. Now this is a big deal, this is a very big deal. She says ‘ you know what, you can go wherever you want with this. But just please, don’t race it.’ And, and he spends the whole next week now, he has a little bit more ability to hold back. He spends the whole next week driving around, he takes it out on the streets, he takes it out on the freeway, but he gets a chance to race it. A guy revs his engine next to him at a red light and he races it, and he gets in a crash. And somehow miraculously, just breaks his leg. He goes to the hospital, this time by himself. On his way back, he remembers the monk from that time, ten years ago, and he shows up and the monk is there, ten years older! He says ‘ you can stay here, you just can’t ask about the noise.’ And he does, he stays there, he’s completely healed, but he just has to know about the noise. And he goes up to the monk and he’s like ‘what is that noise?’ And the monk says ‘I’m sorry, I cannot tell you. That is a secret reserved only for monks, and you are not a monk, so you cannot know.’ And the kid is like ‘rghhhhh, I really need to know.’ He goes like a month, but it’s eating him up inside. He needs to know what this noise is. He’s been healed by it, three times, by this power, in-in this monastery. He just needs to know. So, he goes off to Tibet and goes through a year and a half of training and becomes a monk. Certified, with the robes, and everything. Now, he comes back to that monastery in his hometown and he says ‘sir I am now a monk, you have got to show me what that noise is.’ And the monk gestures, towards a green door. And the boy, now a man, approaches the door, it’s locked. So he goes back to the monk and says ‘the door is locked’ and the monk hands him a green key. So he goes up, takes the green key to the green door, unlocks it up, and there’s a tall green staircase heading up further into the monastery. So he opens the green door, goes up the green stairs, and at the top, there’s a black door. And it’s locked (said in a soft, wondering voice). So he goes down the green stairs, through the green door and to the monk and says the ‘black door, it’s locked!’ and the monk hands him a black key. So he goes through the green door, up the green stairs to the black door, unlocks it, opens it up, there’s a loooong black hallway, extremely long with LITTLE point of orange light at the end. He walks down the black hallway, he thinks he’s walking five minutes probably. Gets to the end and sees an orange door with a slight glow. And it’s locked. So he turns around, he goes all the way down the black hallway, through the black door, down the green stairs, through the green door and to the monk and says ‘the orange door, it’s-it’s locked.’ And he hands him an orange key, glowing with that same ethereal light (every time the man runs back to get a key, informant does gestures of running and opening doors and going down stairs). And he turns back around, he goes through the green door, up the green stairs, through the black door, DOWN the black hallway and opens (says the word very softly) the orange door and the room behind it is vast and glowing with orange lava POWER. And he walks to the other side, and there’s a trap door in the floor. And this trap door, it’s…the most beautiful sapphire blue. It’s crystalline and delightful…and it’s locked. So he goes back across the orange cavern, through the orange door, down the black hallway, through the black door, down the green stairs, through the green door to the monk and says ‘PLEASE. So many hallways! Give me the key to the sapphire trap door.’ And he hands him the key, and this key feels special. It is also made of sapphire. So he goes through the green door, up the green stairs, through the black door, down the black hallway, through the orange door, across the orange cavern (increases speed of recital as each door is crossed) and unlocks the sapphire trap door. Creeeeeeaks (makes a creaking noise) open, there’s a ladder leading down. And he crawls down the ladder and in this room, there’s this sort of atrium, with light filtering in from the windows. It feels VERY magical. And in the center of that room is a huuuuge trunk, about this big (gestures arms about 5-6 feet apart). It is wooden and old and it looks like it is carved by the ancient monks. The monks that even the current monks don’t remember. And he goes down and he inspects it, and uh, there’s no lock. So, he takes it, eeeeeeergh (creaking noise), opens it, and inside that trunk, is a crate. It’s about the size of the coffee table (about 4 feet in length, 3 feet in height) and that- that crate, he pries open the lid and inside that crate is a briefcase. Now this is like a modern briefcase, he’s a little weirded out at this point, but he can tell. From this briefcase, emanating the sound which he heard so many years ago. And he opens the briefcase and within the briefcase is a cigar box. And the noise is getting louder now and he opens the cigar box and within the cigar box is a match box, and the noise is as loud as it could possibly be. And he opens the match box and do you know what he found?

What?

I can’t tell you, you’re not a monk.”

The informant is a student at the University of Southern California. He says he first heard this joke when he was in elementary school from a friend. Once he heard the joke, he loved it so much that he started telling it himself with added emphasis and actions. He says that his friend told him that the informant performed it better than he could, and passed on the performance to the informant. The informant is therefore now the active bearer of this joke and performance. It is a joke that is frustratingly long, almost a narrative. It causes the audience to constantly keep listening, waiting for the punch line to appear so the joke can end and they can laugh. However, the joke drags out for a very long time, causing the audience to become more frustrated the longer that they cannot know the end of the joke. Therefore, as the joke does not resolve in any real way in the end, it is intended to leave the audience frustrated. The informant says that he performs the story with additional stages during the life (such as a bicycle and a car in high school, before the part where he turns 20) and with additional doors and keys depending on how long and frustrating he wants to make the joke. He says however, that he always has to have 3 stages of life minimum and 4 doors minimum when he tells it, or else the story cannot be told properly. He also says that every time he tells it, there are some fixed phrases that he uses and repeats throughout the story. This makes use of the oral formulaic theory, where he has beats and fixed phrases in his narrative to help him retell the story well and accurately.