Catch Riddle—USA

“If you ask someone to say I’m a Math Debater! Five times fast, it sounds like they are saying I’m a Masturbator!”

Marcelo informed me that this was one of his favorite riddles because it works every time, and because everyone always gets a good kick out of it.  He first heard it from one of his close friends when he was a junior at his high school, Palos Verdes Peninsula High in Southern California.  It is a pretty simple catch riddle; a way of getting someone to say something that they ordinarily would never, and is vulgar, inappropriate and hilarious.  Usually when someone performs the riddle, he or she does it in front of a large group of friends so that the victim will feel more embarrassed and sometimes even humiliated.  From Marcelo’s personal experience, the victim usually gets really red in the face and buries his face in his hands.  Right after this victim utters the phrase five times fast, there is a pause in the group, and everyone looks at each other, and then bursts out into laughter.  Though Marcelo does not know where the riddle originally came from he believes that he’s heard the same catch riddle throughout California, both southern and northern, so it likely originated somewhere on the west coast.  Either way, he has been using on kids at USC ever since he started school here in August 2007.