Tag Archives: Joke

Rajasthani Wedding Games for the Groom

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: dancer
Residence: Las Vegas, NV
Performance Date: December 18, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Marwari, Marathi, Hindi

1. The first time the son-in-law comes to his mother-in-law’s house,  the women in her family fill his mouth with sweets, and he can’t refuse.

2. The Son-in-law will also have to pick out his new wife from amongst all the women in her family (and servants). They will all cover their faces with their veils and group together. The new husband must recognize his bride by her hands and figure; if he picks her out, he gets to spend the night at her side. Otherwise, he has to sleep outside under the stars.

Just like for the bride, the marriage period is a liminal period of transition that needs to be eased. Teh groom is now responsible for his wife and is joining a new family.Unlike the bride’s experience though, the groom is not being tested like the bride for his courage, strength, intelligence, etc. This is probably a carry over form the dowry tradition, back in old days (and to this day in villages and conservative communities) the bride’s family would pay the groom’s family to marry their daughter. Thus, the groom’s family would put her to the test to make sure she was “worth the money” so to speak. Now, the dowry system is uncommon, but the practice of testing the new wife remains.

The Bird and the Cow

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 18 2013
Primary Language: English

Giovanni’s grandfather will occasionally tell the story of the Bird and the Cow to his grandchildren in order to instruct them on a lesson in life. The story goes as follows:
There once was a bird that was flying south for winter, but he had left too late into winter that the air was extremely cold. While he was flying, his wings began to freeze, and he could no longer continue to fly. He became completely frozen and fell to the ground. While on the ground freezing to death, a cow happened to walk past and noticed the freezing bird. The cow takes a crap on the bird and then walks away. The poo actually warms up the bird, and eventually the poo thaws him out. When the birds mouth is thawed out, he begins to sing for joy, knowing that he eventually will be out free. Then a fox that is walking by hears the singing bird thawing in the cow dung. The fox digs the bird out of the cow dung, and then he eats the bird.
There are three lessons that are meant to be learned from Giovanni’s story. The first is that not everyone who shits on you is your enemy. The second is that not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend. Lastly, when you are deep in shit keep your mouth shut.

Drink Your Windex

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 3rd, 2013
Primary Language: English

This saying was said by my informant’s father to her whenever she stood in front of the television. He would say “you didn’t drink your Windex this morning”, and my informant now says this whenever she finds herself in a similar situation.

Windex is a window and mirror cleaner, and so presumably this saying means that you are not clear enough to see through (and you would be if you had ingested Windex). It could only have come into existence after 1933, when Windex was first produced. It also indicates the commonality of the product and the issue, as there is a saying incorporating a brand name product in a situation that became more and more prevalent as televisions began to enter homes.

A Cookie A Day

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a joke passed on in the family of my informant, and dates back to his grandfather. It plays on the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. His father would have a cookie for breakfast every day, saying that he didn’t need a doctor or an apple and that he would rather have a cookie. He died in his fifties from heart complications.

This has now become a joke in their family; every time someone feels ill, a family member would recommend that the person start eating cookies for breakfast, and gave rise to the adapted saying in their family that “a cookie a day keeps the doctor away”.

No Eye Deer

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Student (Graduate)
Residence: Declined to State
Performance Date: May 1, 2013
Primary Language: English

“What do you call a deer with no eyes?

No eye-deer [spoken like “idea” with a drawling a that ends in an r].”

 

The informant learned this and other jokes (most of them he claimed to be especially bad, and possibly prized for their cringe-worthiness), during band camp when he was an undergraduate, (he was introduced to many of them in his freshman year. The informant said that telling jokes is part of the ritual of band camp, partly to foster camaraderie and boost morale, and partially to evade boredom on buss trips. He said you had to tell jokes because “you can only drink so much on a bus trip.”

This particular joke holds no specific significance for the informant, but is representative of the types of jokes he remembers.

This joke, and the group of jokes of a similar type that it comes from, seems to have a universal hold on different age groups. It’s extremely similar to the types of jokes that might be told at a camp for youths. Word play is as understandable to adults as it is to children, and the frequency of the retelling of these kinds of jokes suggests that English speakers (and perhaps speakers of other languages as well) find humor in the manipulation of speech, which is such an ordinary part of life. This works with surprise to create humor.