Category Archives: Riddle

The Sexist Doctor Riddle

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Graphic Designer
Residence: Massachusetts
Performance Date: March 15, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian, Spanish

The following is a riddle my informant told to me:

A man and his son were driving down an icy road. When they took a corner, the car flipped. After a while, two ambulances came, one took the father to a hospital in the west, the other took the son to an hospital in the east. The nurses rushed the son into surgery, because he was losing a lot of blood. The doctor entered, and after looking at the boy exclaimed: ” I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son!” How can this be?

Answer: The doctor is the boy’s mother

My informant told me that he tells this riddle often at parties or to his kids’ friends. Half of the time people guess the answer right away, but the other half of the time it completely stumps them.

When I first heard this riddle from my informant I could not figure it out. I thought it had to do with the sun rising, or another meaning of the word: “son”. As it turns out, it just reflected how the term “doctor” is still associated more with men than with women. I believe that this riddle is important because it pokes fun at the sexism of American society.

Friday

Nationality: American
Age: 11
Occupation: Child
Residence: Frisco, Texas
Performance Date: April 9, 2012
Primary Language: English

Lawson Franklin Echols-Richter

Houston, Texas

April 9, 2012

Folklore Type: Riddle

Informant Bio: Lawson is my youngest cousin. He is eleven years old. He is from Frisco, Texas and has lived there his whole life. Lawson is the younger of two boys, and both of his parents are Methodist Pastors. He enjoys video games and showing off his skills of dancing and flipping a fedora onto his head. I call him The Dude.

Context: I saw Lawson briefly with his father when my grandfather (not ours) passed away. I asked him what were some jokes he had been learning at school. He said he could not remember any jokes, but he knew a few riddles.

Item: A couple rode into town on Friday. They stayed for three days, and then rode back on Friday. How? The couple’s horse was named Friday.

Informant Analysis: He said sarcasm than anything else, and I would actually say kinda funny.

Analysis: Even though I heard this riddle when I was a child, it took me a moment to get it because I forgot that they rode in on a horse and not a car. Albeit that is part of the riddle, however, it is also something a southerner might get a bit faster than people from big cities or places up north that do not ride horses. Not all Texans ride horses, but they are around. This riddle is an example of a child playing with words and leaving out certain details because he never mentioned what exactly the couple rode into town on. I also think there is a bit of country cultural flare because country people are more likely to figure out Friday is a horse because they are around them more often.

Alex Williams

Los Angeles, California

University of Southern California

ANTH 333m   Spring 2012

 

 

Two Twin Ducks

Nationality: American
Age: 11
Occupation: Child
Residence: Frisco, Texas
Performance Date: April 9, 2012
Primary Language: English

Lawson Franklin Echols-Richter

Houston, Texas

April 9, 2012

Folklore Type: Riddle

Informant Bio: Lawson is my youngest cousin. He is eleven years old. He is from Frisco, Texas and has lived there his whole life. Lawson is the younger of two boys, and both of his parents are Methodist Pastors. He enjoys video games and showing off his skills of dancing and flipping a fedora onto his head. I call him The Dude.

Context: I saw Lawson briefly with his father when my grandfather (not ours) passed away. I asked him what were some jokes he had been learning at school. He said he could not remember any jokes, but he knew a few riddles.

Item: So the two twin ducks sitting in a movie theater next to each other they’re both twins, but they are not born on the same day how is this possible? The answer is they are two twins not from the same family.

Informant Analysis: He said it’s just funny.

Analysis: This riddle is pretty intellectual in regards to the answer. It is also pretty intellectual humor that is simply derived from people attempting to figure out the riddle and enjoying the answer. It is not vulgar which could indicate that Lawson is not quite yet at that age of figuring out usual boy topics such as bathroom humor, or his cousin and father were not the ideal people to tell a vulgar joke too. The ducks do however denote a slight sense of innocence because of how much children love animals. Either way the joke demonstrates young boys attempting to play with and twist different scenarios in the world around them.

Alex Williams

Los Angeles, California

University of Southern California

ANTH 333m   Spring 2012

 

Riddle: If a rooster…

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (Environmental Sciences)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

Q: If a rooster lays an egg on a roof, does the egg roll down the left or the right side?

A: Roosters don’t lay eggs.

My informant learned this riddle in elementary school from a classmate, and it became her favorite riddle when she told it to her parents and they couldn’t answer it correctly.

The structure of the riddle is a familiar one that leads the audience to focus on the question (which way does the egg roll?) rather than the subject (the rooster laying the egg), because they have been conditioned by past experience with riddles to expect either a play on words or for the answer to be in the question. The answer subverts both expectations. This could be considered a catch riddle, since both a “left” and “right” answer would show that the audience had missed the point of the riddle.

The reason my informant liked the riddle so much as a child supports the theory that much of children’s folklore exists to empower children or to undermine the control of authority figures. That roosters can’t lay eggs is common knowledge, even for children, and children are delighted when people who are supposedly more knowledgeable than them fail to notice the obvious impossibility of the riddle.

Joke – What’s Black and White and Re(a)d All Over?

Nationality: Mexican-American (2nd. Gen)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downey, California
Performance Date: January 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Q: What’s black and white and red all over?

A: A newspaper.

My informant first heard this riddle in third grade during a show and tell in her elementary school in Downey, CA.  Some of her classmates that did not have anything to show could just tell a joke they knew.  One of her classmates gave this riddle, and no one had been able to figure it out in her class.  A newspaper is certainly black and white, and it is “read” all over.  The children persistently thought what object could be the colors black, white, and “red,” so they were stumped.

Riddles like these are handy for entertainment purposes.  I believe that people tell such riddles because they would like to engage a crowd big or small.  When told a riddle, people are naturally inclined to solve it, and if they give up, they are eager to know the answer.  Usually the answer is a very simple one whereas people trying to solve the riddle looked too deeply into it.  That is also very entertaining when the answer turns out to be something that was so obvious, but they never thought it would be that easy.

 

Annotation: This riddle was in the 1995 movie “Batman Forever” in which the villain, the Riddler, played by actor Jim Carey asks this riddle.