Tag Archives: Joke

Ole and Lena Joke

Text

Transcribed Text from Informant:

“One day, he…Ole that is…went to his doctor to complain about his sex life with Lena. So the doctor’s like ‘Okay, well…try walking ten miles a day and see what happens…’ Oh, and then he says call me after a week. So a week later Ole calls his doctor and the doctor’s like, ‘well? How’s your sex life going’ And Ole goes, ‘what sex life?’ I’m 70 miles away from home.”

Context

Ole and Lena jokes represent a canon of humor found in the Upper Midwest region of the United States (Including North Dakota, the birthplace of my informant). All of these jokes generally center around a married couple – Ole and Lena – and can vary dramatically in length. While not true of every single “Ole and Lena” joke, many of these jokes feature sexual innuendos or blue humour.

My informant heard many of these Ole and Lena jokes growing up, both on the playground from other kids, and from her parents and parents’ friends joking around with each other at night. When I ask my informant for her analysis of this piece of folk humour she laughs and goes “it’s self-explanatory, no? Instead of walking 10 miles every day and returning home, he leaves home entirely and keeps on walking. A lot of Ole and Lena jokes feature…like…a misinterpretation I guess you could say of something someone said.”

My Analysis

From the Ole and Lena jokes I’ve heard in my life, this seems to follow a formula similar to one followed by many Ole and Lena jokes. Someone says one thing and usually Ole – though sometimes Lena too – misinterprets the saying or takes the phrase too literal. I fear that analyzing a joke too much strips the joke of its innate humour and staying-power that makes it apart of German-Russian North Dakotan folklore, but I found this particular Ole and Lena joke to be funny indeed.

I was able to find this particular joke in a folklorist archive, cited here:

“Ole and Lena Joke Book – the Gold Scales.” Nvg.org, 2019, oaks.nvg.org/ole-lena.html.

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Ole and Lena Joke

Transcribed Text from Informant

“Okay…so…Ole gets home from work, and he and Lena are going to go out on a date. But when he gets to the bedroom…Lena’s completely naked (laughs). So Ole says ‘what are you doing naked’? And Lena tells him that she has nothing to wear…so…Ole goes to their closet and starts shifting through her clothes going ‘what do you mean you have nothing to wear’? (coughs) You have a white dress here, a black dress here, an orange dress here, Sven is here, and a…red dress here.”

Context

Ole and Lena jokes represent a canon of humor found in the Upper Midwest region of the United States (Including North Dakota, the birthplace of my informant). All of these jokes generally center around a married couple – Ole and Lena – and can vary dramatically in length. While not true of every single “Ole and Lena” joke, many of these jokes feature sexual innuendos or blue humour. Sven is also a friend of Ole and Lena that appears every once in a while in the canon of jokes, and is seen in the particular joke told about.

My informant heard many of these Ole and Lena jokes growing up, both on the playground from other kids, and from her parents and parents’ friends joking around with each other at night. My informant chuckles as a response to slight uncomfortableness when I ask her how she interprets it. She goes on to say “Well…it’s…obviously a joke on Lena being unfaithful, and Ole finding Sven in the closet.” She presses that infidelity is not endemic to German-Russians, and that it’s just light-hearted blue humour.

My Analysis

Like many Ole and Lena jokes, this particular joke features sexual innuendos that are common in the Ole and Lena jokes told by German-Russians in North Dakota. It’s a humorous joke that I believe still holds up, hence why the joke’s stayed in German-Russian folklore.

Ole and Lena Joke

Transcribed Text from Informant

So…Ole and Lena go to the ballet…and after a little bit Ole leans over to Lena and whispers ‘why are they dancing on their toes? Couldn’t they have just gotten taller dancers?’”

Context

Ole and Lena jokes represent a canon of humor found in the Upper Midwest region of the United States (Including North Dakota, the birthplace of my informant). All of these jokes generally center around a married couple – Ole and Lena – and can vary dramatically in length. While not true of every single “Ole and Lena” joke, many of these jokes feature sexual innuendos or blue humour.

My informant heard many of these Ole and Lena jokes growing up, both on the playground from other kids, and from her parents and parents’ friends joking around with each other at night. My informant says that she’s particularly fond of this joke, in large part due to how silly Ole’s observation is.

My Analysis

I agree with my informant that this joke is very funny. The sort of silly, “brain-dead” humor is emblematic of a lot of the German-Russian North Dakotan humor. While nothing in the joke itself references the specific cultural practices of German-Russians, the humor itself serves as a beacon of the folk humor popular within these North Dakotan communities.

Irish Joke

Text Transcribed from Informant

“Alright, there’s a mother and a daughter, and the daughter goes running to her mother going ‘Mom, mom, there’s some strange man at the door! And her mother goes ‘does he have a bill?’ and the daughter goes (informant chuckles) No, he’s just got a regular nose.”

Context

My informant claims that he heard this particular Irish joke from his grandmother when she was babysitting him as a young boy. My informant says that at the time he didn’t entirely understand it, because he didn’t realize that a duck’s nasal passages was referred to as a “bill.” However, his grandmother later told him the joke again when he was older, and he was able to understand it then. He says that this experience made him remember the joke, and that he sometimes tells it as small get-togethers with friends or at parties.

My Analysis

It’s somewhat strange to try and give an analysis to a simple joke – it sorts of feels like “over explaining” the joke and hence stripping the joke of its humor. But I found this to be rather funny. I thought my informant’s personal anecdote of hearing the joke for the first time and not knowing what a “bill” was almost funnier than the original text itself, but that’s most likely due to the personal connection I have with the informant. Overall though, it does remind me of other short Irish jokes I’ve heard told.

I Like your Cut-G

Informant: The informant is my sibling, a Mexican American boy who is 14 years old and currently an 8th grader at a charter school in Los Angeles California. 

Context: The following transcript is a conversation between him and me and his explanation of why he got hit on his head that day at school. I will be referring to him as J in the following transcript of our conversation. 

Transcript: 

Me: Can you explain what exactly was done to you today?

J: Today I got hit on the back of my head by one of my friends. He said he did it because I got a new haircut and he liked it. This is usually done to someone who gets a new haircut at school. What happens is that when someone has a new haircut they get hit in the back of the head. The person who hits the person with the new haircut, yells: “I like your Cut-G! I think it’s sort of like meaning that they like your new haircut, but instead of coming upfront and telling each other, we hit each other. Most of this is done with only the guys because the girls don’t hit each other, nor do they come up to us guys to hit us. There are also even videos on Youtube, and I think it even became a trend on TikTok reactions or something. Like even there are sounds for this.

Analysis: I really didn’t find this meme to be all that interesting, but upon analyzing it a bit more, I noticed that this meme stems from stereotyping of boys/men. Men/boys are always taught to never really reveal much of their feeling or talk too much because “that not what men do.” This meme demonstrates how instead of kids and male adults telling each other that they like their haircut, there is this “touch love idea” or more of bro code that is being made when they out of a sudden hit their heads. There is this idea that because it is tough that it is cool.