Category Archives: Humor

Wealthy Man Riddle

Nationality: Native American
Age: 12
Occupation: student
Residence: Franklin, Tennessee
Performance Date: 4-22-20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Informant: There was a very wealthy businessman and a woman on a flight who was sitting right next to each other. And the woman was just trying to get some sleep on her flight. But the wealthy businessman was like bored out of his mind so he decided to give the woman a trick. He said, “I’ll ask you a question and if you don’t know it, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question and if I don’t know it, I pay you $500.” The woman was like “ok, fine.”

So the guy asked the woman, he asked her a riddle and she had no idea was it was, so she went ahead and gave him $5. Then the woman asked the man, “What goes up a hill with 4 legs, but comes down with two?” The man spent a really long time thinking about it. He called his friends, he looked it up, but he couldn’t find the answer anywhere. And then he finally asked her what was the answer. And she hands him back his $5. Because, she didn’t know the answer either.

Interviewer: Wait, what?

Background:

The informant is a twelve-year-old Native American girl from the Choctaw, Blackfoot, and Lakota Nations. She was born and raised in Tennessee and frequently travels out west to visit family and friends. She is in sixth grade.

Context:

During the Covid-19 Pandemic I flew back home to Tennessee to stay with my family. The informant is my younger sister. I asked her is she knew any jokes or riddles.

Thoughts:

Proverbs, riddles, and.charms are three of the shorter forms of folklore. They are not necessarily confined to oral expression, having appeared in written literature for ages. The purpose of the riddle is usually to deceive its listener regarding its meaning. A descriptions is given where the answer must be deciphered. Many times riddles are used as a contest of wits. Regarding this particular riddle . . . story? The rich man was bored and used his money for entertainment. I honestly really don’t know what to say. It was kind of funny. (also, between us, could it be a murderer who went to bury a dead body . . .? Hopefully something much more pleasant).

Quarantine Meme: Hand Sanitizer

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los angeles
Performance Date: march 25, 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Background: The informant and group of students in the chat respond and understand this piece because of its relevance. The young students feel a connection to the importance of hand sanitizer and also identify with the apple product AirPods. AirPods were an important new product circulating in 2019 which many students identify with. The meme pokes fun at the new best product of 2020 being hand sanitizer due to the coronavirus. 

Context: This meme circulated through a group of college students group chat in early April 2020. The students were all around 20 years old. 

Thoughts: This meme is interesting because it comments on the relevance of commercial products in folk culture. Social groups hold brand loyalty and identity with certain products and therefore those products are apart of their folk identity. In 2019 groups attached their identity to the new Apple AirPods. This brand loyalty is compared to the new identification with the hand sanitizer product due to Coronavirus. Now people everywhere identify with the hand sanitizer product and always have it by their side or attached to their belts. This commercially produced product has increased meaning to culture. 

An Irish Wake

Nationality: American
Age: 70
Occupation: Health Care Worker
Residence: Alton, Illinois
Performance Date: 4/28/2020
Primary Language: English

Main piece:

(The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant and interviewer.)

Informant: Grandpa, he always used to tell the story about the Irish – I’ve told you this one before – about the Irish wakes – cause the Irish always had the big parties. And, uhh, that was back in the days, when, you know… they were having a party for one of the guys that had just expired. And he was in the kitchen laid out on the kitchen table! And everybody was, you know, laughing and going on because… they celebrate death, in a different way. And so. (laughing) and then all of a sudden the guy sat up! Because they didn’t have embalming back there, and back then and stuff, you know. You just – they just, they laid you out and you wait a couple days-they – you know, they didn’t keep you around for very long cause you start smellin’. So, you know, people with diabetic comas and stuff like that they didn’t know about that back then, so, uhh, he just sat up! (laughs) And he wasn’t dead anymore! He asked for a beer! He said, “everyone’s drinking a beer, I want one too.” I think I would’ve been scared out of my mind!

Interviewer: Right!

Informant: Eh, if your grandpa- when he told it it was always funnier.

Interviewer: No, that was funny!

Background: My informant was born and raised in southern Illinois to very strict Catholic parents. She has strong Irish and Italian heritage. This is a joke/story that I’ve heard many times since growing up, in slight variations.

Context: The informant is my grandmother, and has always had a proclivity for telling stories, jokes, and wives tales. This piece was selected out of many from a recording of a long night of telling stories in a comfortable environment.

Thoughts: I think that the main joke in this story is that the Irish drink a lot, which is a simple and common theme for Irish stories and jokes and stereotypes. There is also a layer in which the man waking up is funny in itself, though I’ve realized it has to do with who is telling the story. I’ve heard it told more straightforward and snappily, getting to the line at the end where the man says he wants a beer as if it’s more of a punchline. In this telling, however, my grandmother focused around the absurdity of someone you thought was dead sitting up and thinking everything was fine.

My Girlfriend’s A Vegetable; An Army Cadence

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Army Ranger
Residence: classified
Performance Date: April 14. 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Here is a transcription of my (CB) interview with my informant (GK).

GK: “My girlfriend’s a vegetable, (and then everyone would answer you back, so like each time you say something they say it again). So it goes:

My girl’s a vegetable

She lives in the hospital

And I would do anything to keep her alive

She has a green TV

It’s called an EKG

I would do anything to keep her alive

She has no arms or legs

That’s why we call her Peg

I would do anything to keep her alive

Sometimes I play a joke, pull a plug and watch her choke

But I would do anything to keep her alive

“So yeah there’s a lot of just nonsense ones like that, that are very strange” 

CB: [laughs] “Thats great, so what does it mean to you?”

GK: “Well that one in particular doesn’t really mean anything to me”

CB: “So what context would they sing them in?”

GK: “Oh, you just sing them to pass the time. And too, they’re also like morale raisers. Like when morale is really low you’d just sing a cadence. Because like they actually sound pretty musical when everyone sings them together, and like you don’t need any instruments and everyone knows them.”

. . .

“A lot of them are about dying, to like make dying seem not so bad. A lot of them are about really horrible things too. There’s like napalm 66, and there’s one about shooting up a playground. There’s just all sorts of shit”

CB: “And so why do you think they’re so horrible?”

GK: “Well like war is a horrible thing, and so a lot of cadences are started by infantrymen, and it prepares people for the horrible things that they’re going to see for one. And two, singing them, it makes things seem not so bad. Like they sing about the worst things that can happen to you. And just thinking about it is so awful it can make you freeze up, and when you sing about it and make it not so bad, so then when you think about it, it makes it more of like a joke so you’re not going to freeze up.”

Background:

My informant just graduated from basic training, and is now at a military base waiting to start further training and specialization. He grew up with an older brother in the army and has learned a lot about army culture from him, and then from his superiors at basic training. He described cadences as very similar to a sort of summer camp song that bonds and amuses those engaging in it. The main difference is the content. Despite this example being relatively mild, my informant assured me that many cadences engage in very dark humor and describe horrific events.

Context:
I called my informant to interview him over the phone, and recorded the interview on my laptop. I had often asked him about his experiences since enlisting, and so my questions were fairly normal for him. It was a casual comfortable conversation with the occasional input from his roommate.

Thoughts: 

The cadences portray horrible situations as humorous. The song describes a loved one on life support humorously, while also portraying a commitment to her. It encourages the singers and the listeners to interact with a horrific reality, that they might not have been prepared for otherwise. My informant talked about how the cadences are spread by infantrymen who are likely engaging in some of the worst situations that war has to offer. The cadences are then taught to the incoming trainees as a way to desensitize them and prepare them for the horrors ahead. It’s interesting that they also act as such a strong morale booster. I think that by singing them with others it acts as a reminder that you’re not alone. Yes, you may be forced into some horrific situations, but you will never be alone.

For another version of this song see entry titled “My Girls A Vegetable” in the online Army Study Guide. https://www.armystudyguide.com/content/cadence/marching_cadence/my-girls-a-vegetable.shtml

One Legged Pig Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Pastry Chef
Residence: Napa, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2020
Primary Language: English

Here is a transcription of my (CB) interview with my informant (AH).

AH: “So I heard this from my dad, but I don’t know where he heard it. There’s this delivery guy and he’s making his normal rounds, but he has to go out to this really rural part of town to deliver this package. It’s a big ranch house and there’s a huge yard, and there’s pigs out and dogs out, it’s just absolutely gorgeous. So he walks up to the house and there’s a pig pen off to the side and he notices that there’s a pig out there with only one leg.”

CB: “Only one leg?”

AH: “Only one leg. And he thought ‘well that’s odd’. So he goes to the door to deliver the package and he asks the guy ‘hey what’s with the pig that has only one leg?’ 

And the guy looks at him and goes ‘See that pig right there! Let me tell you about that pig! THAT pig ran into my house and saved my WHOLE family when it was burning down. And we’ve rebuilt everything now, but he saved my entire family’s life’

And the guy says, ‘that’s cool, but why does he only have one leg?’

And then the man looks at him and he says, ‘Let me tell you about that pig right there. That pig saved my daughter from being eaten by a rattlesnake.’

And he says, ‘That’s awesome, but why does he only have one leg?’

And he says, ‘Let me tell you about THAT pig right THERE. It was the middle of the night and a wolf was coming down the mountains to eat my animals, and THAT pig right there chased that wolf all the way up the mountain saving my entire livestock.’

And he was like, ‘That’s GREAT. But WHY does he only have one leg?’

And the old man looks at him dead in the eye, and he says, ‘Well it’d be a shame to eat him all at once wouldn’t it?’ ”

CB: [Laughs] “Um… That’s great. What do you think the meaning of the joke is?”

AH: “Uh… uh don’t get rid of a good thing”

CB: “What do you think that it’s important to share that joke?”

AH: “Well it’s important because it teaches you how to properly eat a pig without killing it.” [Laughs]

Background:
My informant told me this joke, even though we had both heard one particular member of our family repeat it many times. The joke plays on a dark sense of humor that he is known for, and has become very heavily associated with that relative.

Context:
My informant called me with stories prepared after hearing that I had been interviewing other members of our family for folklore. We had a fun and casual conversation, exchanging versions of stories that we had heard growing up.

Thoughts:

My informant, and her father who told her the joke, grew up in Salinas, CA. Salinas has grown to be a decent sized city, however it is still surrounded by a huge agricultural community. This joke reflects tensions that are common in modern agricultural communities; a separation between the ‘city folk’ and the ‘country folk’. This joke mocks the farmer for their stereotypical behavior, and satirizes his choice to eat his livestock. By having the farmer eat such a clearly intelligent and amazing pig, the joke portrays him as ‘uncivilized’ and out of touch with modernly accepted behaviors. These ideas represent stereotypes for farming communities, and highlight the tension within the community.

For another variation of this joke see Doug Mayo’s post “Friday Funny: The Pig with a Wooden Leg” in University of Florida’s IFAS Extension. https://nwdistrict.ifas.ufl.edu/phag/2016/01/15/friday-funny-the-pig-with-a-wooden-leg/