Category Archives: Humor

Plonkies

Text: “In High School, I was in drama club. Every time before a show, about 15 minutes before a show, everyone would gather around to hear our director’s speech to send us off. When it got down to 5 minutes, our stage managers – that being our Production Stage Manager and two Assistant Stage Managers would stand up on chairs in the center of the crowd. Their speech is different from the directors’; it was more centered towards hype and getting all the positive energy into your systems. They would start with a drum roll…and as that beat rolled through the crowd, they would spin their arms in circles and YELL, “It’sssssss going! Itsssssss going! ITSSSSSSS PLONKIES!” Everyone would say the Plonkies part with them, and then all hype, we would run off to places, whether we were in the crew or cast. I’m not sure how it originated, but it has been a long-running tradition since I joined my freshman year. Plonkies is pretty much a funny way to say places. It would be said at the beginning of each of the three shows we had over the weekend; the last one was always said cause it meant the last show, but it was fun nonetheless.”

Context: A high school theater tradition that is celebrated by both members of the cast and crew and performed by students. OK was a tech student and saw and participated in this tradition for all four years in high school, for each of the eight shows over that time. There would be two shows every year. It is always performed by the Stage Managers.

Analysis: The mix of the drum roll, the yelling, and everyone joining in creates this shared burst of energy that hypes people up and calms nerves at the same time. There has always been a wide variety of traditions within theaters, most relating to ghosts, but it is interesting to see a different kind, one that includes both the crew and the cast together. Overall, it’s a good example of how inside jokes and traditions can build a sense of community and make stressful moments feel exciting instead of overwhelming. Knowing it has been a tradition passed down for generations of theater students makes the sense of community even stronger; it’s a bond of the present and past students.

Goosey Night (AKA Mischief Night)

Text:

M: “So on Goosey Night, we’d all sneak out and we’d bring ivory soap. It was always ivory soap. And you’d go around and you’d be putting soap all over people’s car windows so they can’t drive. And we’d throw eggs at people’s houses and stuff. People called it mischief, we called it goosey night”

Context:

M grew up in New Jersey. Every Halloween Eve, the kids in his town partook in “Goosey Night.” A night full of pranks, mischief, and mayhem.

Analysis:

The phrase “Goosey Night” is a form of esoteric form of folk speech. Most people call Halloween Eve Mischief Night, but my father and the kids he knew called it Goosey Night. By have a different, unique name for the night, the kids were able to communicate with each other in ways outsiders wouldn’t understand. The pranks and mischief of Goosey Night are rituals – repeated, patterned actions. It was a tradition for kids to break the rules once a year, on Goosey Night. In a way, the kids existed in a space of liminality because they weren’t ignorant babies or knowledgeable adults. If an adult partook in Goosey Night, they would most likely be arrested, but kids could because they existed in the in-between space.

Romanian Joke

Age: 51

Context:

The informant is a Romanian immigrant now living in the United States. She recounts the jokes from back home when she was a young in the 90s.

Text:

“We have very weird jokes they’re either offensive, or matter a fact and stupid. For example, like okay, a professor says “Bula tell us five animals from African continent,” and Bula says “1 lion and 4 monkeys.”

Bula is the name of the kid. But it’s so stupid, I find it funny. There were always people that would be saying let me tell u this joke let me tell you that.

Analysis:

This is an example of a larger cycle of Bula jokes, a well-known genre in Romanian humor built around this fool “Bula.” This example shows how folklore is not just text but performance tied to social roles. This joke works depending on who tells it and in what context.

The humor operates through anti-humor because the listener expects a thoughtful response to the professors question but instead receives something very simple. The dryness of the joke and the delivery, which is a core aspect to Romanian humor, enhances the effect in the school setting. The joke is funny because it’s matter of fact, the answer isn’t wrong exactly but it’s so literal and stupid that it’s funny. It reflects how humor can be culturally specific, and it would be a joke within a specific folk group because of it.

Additionally the repetition of Bula in other jokes and by the class clown of the class demonstrates multiplicity and variation as many jokes reuse the same character in different scenarios. This is similar to “let me tell you a joke” or “knock knock” is acts as a signal and a performance marker, listeners then know something funny is going to begin and it frames their way of looking at it.

Finally, these jokes function as a form of social bonding within a peer group, especially in school setting where humor can challenge an authority figure like professors. In strict Romanian schooling a student presenting a joke about a student who gives an absurd answer to a professor is a subtle play at power dynamics within the class. This provides a space for students to laugh at institutional authority and is probably why my informant remembers it so clearly when prompted about jokes.

The Class Rock

Text: The informant told me that there was a tradition their theatre teacher did. There was a specific rock that the teacher had that was like the class rock and on the closing show you’d have to find a place to put it on stage without people noticing it. Then it would be painted to match every show. Then after the closing show they’d go backstage, they think that it was something that people did but on that teacher’s last show the teacher did it, where’d they’d hold it up and everyone would chant “rock”. 

Context: My Informant, 21, white, is currently a college student who is from Southern California, though this story is from before college. They have done theatre for a long time and are still immersed in it. They said this tradition had gone on for a while because the drama teacher had been there a while. Informant also experienced the teachers last year there. 

Analysis: There are a lot of closing night rituals in theatre. I think it shows the limited nature of theatre, and how people deal with it. This is a ritual that marks the end of a show but the object, the symbol, also lives on beyond the show, gets used over and over, and is even called the class rock. It’s permanent among something that is impermanent thus used to say goodbye. I think that ritual of the chant is also a bit of performance used to up the energy, bond, and release some of the emotions that come with an ending. It very much showcases the community aspect and energy of theatre, and the permanent but impermanent nature of it.

“Just a Little Something I Learned in the War”

Text: My good friend KH, who has never been in any war, has installed the line “Just a little something I learned in the war” as a personal signature, dropped after she performs an act of trivial competence. Two recent examples: following up a successful U-turn in her car, “Just a little something I learned in the war.” Another, she twisted off a stuck cap from a soda bottle with some difficulty and said, “Just a little something I learned in the war.” She uses the line straight-faced, without further commentary, which usually makes it even funnier.

Context: KH does not appear to have inherited the phrase from a parent or grandparent; she has identified social media (primarily TikTok) as the point of contact, where the formula has circulated as a stock comic move. 

Analysis: The catchphrase is a piece of folk speech that works through deliberate, comedic over-attribution: KH credits a tiny bit of everyday competence to a vast, unverifiable, fictitious, catastrophic past. The joke depends on both speaker and audience knowing there was obviously no war. The gap between the trigger (a U-turn, a bottle cap) and the dramatic framing is the entire setup. It’s like wider American comic phrases such as “Vietnam flashbacks,” “Back in ‘Nam,” “in the trenches,” and “old Army trick.” All these dresses something small in the language of something terrible and huge, for comedic effect.