Tag Archives: Joke

“Don’t eat yellow snow”

Nationality: cuban
Age: 54
Occupation: social work
Residence: san diego
Performance Date: may 2 2021
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: english

Context: My informant is a 54 year-old woman from Cuban descent. She grew up in Los Angeles, California and lived there until she moved to San Diego for college. Listed below is an account of one of the first jokes she remembers. She detailed that her parents used to use this joke whenever they were in the snow or mountains. 

Interviewer: “Do you have any tips?”

Informant: “Don’t eat yellow snow, that’s a tip!”

Interviewer: “Where did you learn that?”

Informant: “In Big Bear hahahahaha”

Thoughts:

Big Bear is a popular mountain with lots of snow near Los Angeles, California. The joke is a silly reply to the interviewer inquiring about any recommendations. The idea of “yellow snow” insinuates that someone or something might have peed in it. Obviously a person would want to be advised not to eat the snow because that would be unsanitary. This cheeky reply is something that could be told to a waiter or any other worker that one would tip. I found this joke very funny and did laugh for a long while with the informant. I will be telling this joke to friends when we go to the snow and the joke will continue on! 

Worthless Men

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

The joke was collected when a friend came over for dinner and told the room about this family custom.

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Performance

The following is a joke told to me by the interviewee.

A joke that we always say in the family is that the men are worthless whenever they do something wrong. Cherokee legend that women were created because men were worthless and so my family will say, when the men in the house were being trash, that they are so horrible that women had to be created. So if my Dad did something wrong, my mom would joke that of course he did something wrong, because men are worthless and that women had to be created to solve all the problems.

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Analysis

This joke is one that is used to make fun of the men in the household. While very funny and can very much be used as a means to poke fun of the guys in jest, this joke actually holds historical meaning as well. Cherokee women, unlike many early women colonizers from the West, had a lot more power. They were independent, could own land, could leave or divorce their husband, etc. The Cherokee society was based on matrilineage, it was the women and the mothers that determined the family. And thus this joke holds true in how the Cherokee people were brought up.

Andy and the Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired Professor
Residence: Louisiana
Performance Date: October 24, 2020
Primary Language: English

The Story (Over Zoom):
This story is about a little boy named Andy. And Andy was not very cooperative with his mother. He lived alone with his mother, and his mother became ill. She asked Andy to go to the well and get her a cool drink of water. And it was getting night time and Andy says “Nah, I’m scared to go to the well, there’s a ghost that lives in the well”. And his mom says “No, there’s no ghost that lives in the well”. But he wouldn’t go get her a cold drink of water. So that night when they went to bed, he was juuuuust about to sleep, when he heard this sound saying: “AAAAAAANDY I’m on my first step… AAAAAAAAAANDY I’m on my second step… AAAAAAAANDY I’m on your porch… AAAAANDY I’m in your house… AAAAAANDY I’m by your bed… AAAAAANDY I GOT YOU”. *lunges forward as if to grab me*

Context (as given by the informant):
The first time I remember that being played on me was when some of my cousins were visiting and they were three or four years older than what I was, and we were sitting on the front steps of the house where I grew up, and that was one of my early encounters with a ghost story.
It was told as a way to scare younger children.

Analysis:
This story serves two purposes, both as a joke to play on someone unaware, as the ending is a jump scare usually coupled with someone grabbing the listener, but also as a warning. The story tells us that because Andy didn’t listen to his mother and refused to get her water, he was haunted by a ghost. So there’s an element there about respecting one’s elders in addition to the comedic purpose of the tale.

The Joke A Dog with No Nose

Nationality: British European
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Sherman Oaks, California
Performance Date: March 22, 2020
Primary Language: English

Informant: It’s a very short joke.

Interviewer: That’s perfectly fine. Just tell it how you know it.

Informant: Okay. A dog with no nose, how does he smell? — Terrible!

Interviewer: You don’t wait for someone to ask how?

Informant: Not usually. Usually everyone knows the punchline so we all say it together.

Informant: Who’s the we? Where did you learn this?

Informant: Well I think I learned it from my father, he was always making silly jokes like that. Everyone learned it so quickly that it’s a bit hard to say. I remember hearing it during a big party at a small house. It must have been a Sunday because Sunday was when you went to see your family. I remember that because it was something everyone used to get hysterical about, everyone would roll about laughing.

Background: The informant believes she first heard this joke from family. She was not sure if she heard it from her father or older brother who was in the army. They were very close so it’s difficult for her to say who came up with it first, or if they heard it from someone else.

Context: I was asking my informant to recount things she remembered from her childhood and she remembered a few songs and this joke specifically.

Thoughts: It appears to be more of an inside joke but every British person I’ve interacted with appears to know it, but they always play along if they’re asked. It is probably incredibly popular because it’s an easy joke for children to remember and is incredibly easy for them to share to other kids.

The Joke: Boston Crow Story

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, California
Performance Date: March 19, 20202
Primary Language: English

Informant: have you heard of Boston Crows?” ‘No?’ Okay so, in Boston New York, there has been a recent discovery of these special crows that are smarter than your average crow. They have these white speckles, making them very distinct. They’ve been recorded learning how to talk, do routines, and a lot of other things. People started considering them the local pets, almost, but people then started to find a lot of the same crows dead. The outcry got researchers to look into this, led by avian expert Dr. Roseburg. Rosenburg theorized there were many possible factors: different life spans, specific diseases, or predators. So the team observed the crows, trying to find the cause. They found a very interesting behavioral pattern. These crows mated for life early on and would spend a lot if not all their time with those partners while foraging. The most frequently visited places for these crows were the sides of not very busy roads, where people threw out trash of their windows while driving by. This is when scientists discovered something, a majority of these birds were dying due to being hit by vehicles. But these crows were not stupid, they had a very good system of communicating with one another. One bird would sift through the trash while the other sat on a nearby sign post or something and be look out. When a vehicle came along the look out would alert the one down in the gutter so it could fly out in time. But some birds still got hit, for you see, while it’s very easy for a crow to say ‘cahr’… it is very difficult for them to say ‘truck’.

Background: My informant states that they learned this joke from Reddit but they don’t remember the original name of the person who posted it. They first told the joke close to how it was originally written but quickly developed a game out of it where they’d try to spin the story for as long as they could. Their record was 30 minutes

Context: I asked my informant about the joke specifically because they took pride in making the story longer every time they told it. Over Discord I told them to make the story as long as they wanted, they sent me this version a day later.

Thoughts: This is a wonderful example of a shaggy dog story, and allows a lot of creativity on the half of the teller. As long as the punch line isn’t altered you can make it as local or as distant as you want. It was also a great joke to hear someone tell if you already know the punchline, for then you can simply watch the reactions of others who haven’t heard the joke before. I believe I found the original post my informant was referring to on reddit, please see:
docpepson. ‘The Crow Mystery‘. r/Jokes. Jan 25, 2008. www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1l888r/the_crow_mystery/. Accessed March 22, 2020.