Tag Archives: Joke

“I’m Staying Another Week” – How Punchlines Pervade Daily Life

Nationality: American
Age: 54
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 04/05/15
Primary Language: English
Language: none

The informant is a 54 year old woman, who has lived in the United States all her life. She was raised by her mother and has no siblings. She attended school through college, and lives in downtown Chicago with her husband. The following is what she described as “folkspeech” from her mother-in-law.

 

Informant: “It’s from a joke. So, whenever, if we were having a disagreement, like your uncle and I, about anything, and you’d ask your Grandma’s opinion about it. Like, “What do you think?” She’d say, “The soup’s not hot, the soup’s not cold, and I’m staying another week.” It was a punchline to a joke about a married couple whose mother-in-law is there visiting and won’t leave so they stage a fight to try and make her leave. She realizes what they’re doing so she says, “the soup’s not hot, the soup’s not cold, and I’m staying another week.” So whenever I would try to get her involved, that’s what she would do. She said that all the time.

 

Interviewer: “Do you know where she heard the joke?”

 

Informant: “Oh, from Grandpa, I’m sure. He had so many jokes, you remember.

 

Interviewer: “Of course. Do you know where he got his jokes?”

 

Informant: “He would hear them and I guess kind of mentally collect them to tell.

 

Thoughts: Initially I was unsure as to whether or not this was folklore. The phrase itself doesn’t seem very “folkloric” in nature; neither does the informant’s in-law’s use of the phrase. However, when I thought about the phrase again, I realized that it is a form of folklore. The phrase itself came from the punch line of a joke—something that people learn from other people—and the informant’s mother-in-law took the punch line into a different context, her daily life. This is a perfect example of how folklore can traverse across different mediums and how it can be applied in different ways.

 

Why did they name Canada, Canada?

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/28/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is a USC student of Armenian and Caucasian origin, born and raised in California and regularly exercises through distance running. She is also a human biology major with an emphasis in human performance.

 

“One of my Canadian friends who plays sand volleyball here told me this great joke, and its about how Canada got its name. And so basically people were pulling letters out of a hat and so whe they pulled the first letter they said “C—eh!”, second letter “N—eh!” third letter “D—eh!” spells CANADA!”

 

Analysis: This joke is one that the informant learned from someone else, who acquired the joke from people in her own country and culture. The spread of the joke to an American population shows how humor can be used to bridge cultural gaps. Even though the friend she heard the joke from was Canadian, the use of wordplay and the playing off of Canadian stereotypes (saying eh!) was humorous to both the teller of the joke as well as the listener, and provided a foundation for further conversation and friendship later on.

 

No Soap, Radio

Nationality: American
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Residence: Memphis, TN
Performance Date: March 21, 2015
Primary Language: English

The Joke:

“There were two elephants in a bathtub. One elephant said to the other, ‘Pass the soap.’ And the other elephant said, ‘No soap, radio!’”

The informant, a sophomore in high school and my sister, told me this joke. She says that she got it from watching a video on YouTube of user SuperMac18 when she was in seventh grade, in 2010. She says that she and a friend of hers went around telling this joke to their entire grade. The joke is that it doesn’t make any sense. The teller of the joke is supposed to tell it, then laugh and act like the person they tell it to is missing something. Some people pretend that they get it and laugh, as many of the informant’s young classmates did. When the informant told this to my mom and I, both of us were very confused while the informant chuckled to herself as if amused that we didn’t understand; she finally caved and told us the punch line—that there was none. Therefore, it is not merely a joke, but a practical joke. The telling of the joke is in essence a prank on the audience, until they are also brought in on the joke. Since my sister got this from a young YouTuber (at the time SuperMac18 was 15-year-old boy) and was in middle school, I believe that the purpose of telling this joke comes from an immature joy in others’ confusion. Young middle-schoolers tend to enjoy feeling superior to others, using some type of knowledge in order to do so.

Cigarette Lighter

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

The joke: “So there’s two people on a boat. And they have three cigarettes, but they don’t have a lighter, or any way to light them, right? So one of them looks to the other and is like ‘What do we do? There’s three cigarettes?’ So the other one takes one and throws it overboard. And the guy’s like ‘Why’d you do that, you just threw away one of our cigarettes.’ And he’s like, ‘Well now isn’t our whole boat a cigarette lighter?’”

The informant heard this joke when a friend texted it to him; presumably the friend got it from either another friend or online. The joke deals with a pun, and the clever use of wordplay. It’s kind of anti-funny, but just enough to get some laughs when the audience figures out and understands it, which is why I imagine people tell it. It took me a few seconds to get it myself.

Lawyer Hunting

Age: 50
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 17, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: So, a man runs into his buddy, and he sees that his friend’s car is totaled. Just—[makes face to indicate car is not in great shape]  leaves and dirt and branches all over the front. The windshield is shattered. There’s some blood.

And so he asks his friend, “What on earth happened to your car?”

“Well,” the friend says, “I ran over a lawyer.”

“A lawyer?” [informant alternates tone to indicate change in speaker]

“A lawyer.” [solemn nod of head]

“I guess that explains all the blood,” the man says. “But, I mean, what about the leaves and dirt and branches?”

And his friend goes, “Well, I had to chase him through the park.”

The informant (my dad) is a particularly self-deprecating lawyer. While he does take pride in his work, he often admits that he only went to law school because his father had been a lawyer, and the informant had “no idea what to do with [his] life” after he graduated from college. The informant currently works at a law firm in San Francisco (he recently changed firms, after his former firm became too large and very corrupt. I suspect the series of lawyer jokes he told me were told with some of his old colleagues in mind.) This joke was told to my family over the dinner table, and was very much enjoyed by my mom (also an attorney).

This joke, which the informant picked up from another lawyer, plays on the idea that every hates—or at least distrusts—attorneys, enough to get a laugh out of the idea that someone would go to such an extent to run one down with his car.