Tag Archives: grandpa

Dirty jokes

Nationality: American, Mexican

“My grandpa, gosh, use to love to tell dirty jokes. He would say,’Want to hear a dirty joke? A white horse fell in the mud. Want to hear a dirtier one? It fell in again!’

My brother and sister and I use to try to come up with other things that were white to fall in the mud. We didn’t understand the dirty joke part because we were too little.”

So about how old were you?

“Like elementary school age. Six or seven.”

So you and your siblings would try and make up your own versions?

“Mhm. But it was just amongst ourselves. It was more to try to make our grandpa laugh right after he would say his joke.”

This was a repeated thing?

“Ya. I think it kind of stopped though. We ran out of white things and then we also realized what a dirty joke really was. We kind of just grew out of it.”

 

Dirty jokes are a popular genre of humor, but this joke is particularly funny because it uses both meanings of the word “dirty.” In doing this my informants grandfather ensured the joke was funny for both himself and his audience: children.

A Grandpa Song

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

The following is a song that the source’s Grandfather used to sing to her when she was a kid. She originally thought that he wrote the song just for her, but really he took the song “Daisy Bell” a very popular and famous American song, and substituted “Daisy” with the source’s name, Maisie. The clip below has the source first sing the original song, and then her Grandfather’s version.

Grandpa song

“He sang that song to me when I was little and he was, dandling? Is that the right word? Bouncing me on his knee”

 

The song really accomplishes two things. First, it helps the source’s Grandfather expose her to a song that he knows, and shares a piece of his generation with her. Also it created a special connection between Maisie and her Grandpa.

“He was my favorite Grandpa” she said.