Tag Archives: Joke

Donkey wordplay joke

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 9
Residence: Mexico City, Mexico
Performance Date: March 15, 2014
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

My informant is my cousin, a 9 year old boy born and raised in Mexico City to a half-white, half-Mexican mother and a Mexican father. He has an impressive repertoire of jokes that he knows, and impresses and cracks up the family every time he tells them, usually over the traditional Mexican mid-afternoon meal, which is the heaviest meal of the day and is typically eaten with family or friends, the same way dinner is here. He is very popular in school, probably in part because of his sense of humor as well as his natural charm.

This joke was performed over “comida” as the mid-afternoon meal is called, during an hour-long family-wide exchange of jokes. He learned this joke at school.

“Como haces que un burro se haga burra? Lo metes en un cuarto oscuro para que se aburra.”

Transliteration: How do you make a [male] donkey into a [female] donkey? You put him in a dark room so that he gets bored.

The word for female donkey in Spanish is “burra,” while “se aburra” means “[he] gets bored”, so it’s a classic and funny example of wordplay common among children. In fact, most of his jokes are wordplay, which is classic among children, especially as they are gradually learning the nuances and double meanings of a language, and particularly interesting as he is semi-bilingual due to his mom teaching English to him in the home.

Interruptor Cow Knock Knock Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Jose
Performance Date: March 16th, 2014
Primary Language: English

Information about the Informant

My informant is a college student at a community college in San Jose. He’s an avid amateur photographer, and we know each other through going to the same online high school. His family’s very closely-knit, with his parents very involved in the lives of their children. I collected this family in-joke from him while we were visiting the same high school friend outside of Las Vegas.

Analysis

“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Interruptor cow.”
“Interrupt–”
“MOOOO.”

Analysis

When asked why this joke was important to the informant, he replied that, “It is or was for a long time the only joke my mom remembered. So when you said, ‘joke,’ that’s immediately what I thought of.” He and his mother do have a tendency to enjoy humor that involves subversions such as the one in this joke. In this case, that the punchline of the joke is the interruption and the derailment of the usual structure of a knock knock joke. Its subversion of the usual knock knock joke structure may be precisely the reason why the informant’s reason remembers it when she cannot remember any other joke, making this joke one that is precious both to her and my informant as the one family joke that they both remember and can share.

An Irishman Walks Into a Bar

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/14
Primary Language: English

This informant grew up in San Diego, CA.  He is a freshman business student at USC.  I asked him to tell me his best folk joke he had and this is the first one he thought of.

One day an Irishman walks into a bar and orders two pints of Guinness.  The bartender denies the man, explaining that he only serves one drink per person at a time. 

The Irishman replies, “The second drink isn’t for me, it’s for my brother.  See, we both grew up on our family farm in Ireland and every day we used to hit the local pub after work and get a pint together.  One day my father passed away and left us the farm, but eventually the farm could no longer support the both of us.  Being the younger son, I decided to move to America to try my hand at fame and riches.  But before I left we both promised each other to always continue drinking two pints at the local pub after work.” 

The bartender sympathizes with the Irishman’s story and pours him his two Guinness’s.  This goes on for a few weeks, until one day the Irishman comes in and only orders one drink. 

The barman says, “I don’t mean to intrude, but is your brother alright?” 

To which the Irishman replied, “O ya, he’s fine.  I just quit drinking.”

This joke is a variation of the ever popular “…walked into a bar” jokes.  It plays on the stereotype that Irish people love to drink.

Forsee Did It

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Gardener/Substitute Teacher
Residence: Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2014
Primary Language: English

The informant is one of five children. He has two older sisters (one of which is now deceased), one older brother, and one younger brother. His mother is in her 80’s, and his father has been deceased for many years. The family has been in southern California since the children were born. The family frequently gets together at his mother’s house for holidays like Easter and Christmas and family jokes present themselves often.

The joke explained here is one that started in the 1960’s by the informant’s maternal grandfather. In addition to asking the informant and his siblings questions like “Are you married yet?” and “So where are you working?” when they were children much too young to have a spouse or a job, he would also tap their shoulders and say “Forsee did it!” Forsee was the grandfather’s wife. Other small things like accidentally bumping into something or dropping something would also be explained by saying that Forsee did it. This was done in a teasing manner, not a mean-spirited manner. My informant remembers his family talking about his grandfather saying this joke moreso than remembering specific incidences where he witnessed his father saying that Forsee did something. This continued long after the grandfather and grandmother had passed away. Though the frequency of the joke has lessened in the last few years, the informant also tells the joke even when he is not at an extended family gathering and is just in his own home with his own wife and children, though he does so rarely. Though the joke is told relatively often at family gatherings, it is almost always followed by a discussion of how that joke started with the grandfather, even though it is discussed at almost every family gathering. I think it is explained mainly for the benefit of whatever new friend or boyfriend one of the younger generation has brought to the gathering, to bring them “into the family” just a little bit.

This joke speaks to the relaxed nature of this family. Joking around is encouraged, even by the older generation and many family dinners end with loud laughter. There is also a lot of teasing that goes on, both by younger members and older members of the family. Family gatherings are never formal, and the younger cousins often eat on the couch in the living room instead of bothering to get a folding chair out of the closet. Overall, the jokes like the one focused on here and the informal nature of the events really show the relaxed and comfortable nature of the family relationships.

Primate Joke

Nationality: American
Age: late 30's
Occupation: Professor
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 30 April 2014
Primary Language: English

The informant (B) is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine. He teaches gross anatomy to the medical students but his research focuses mainly on primates, both extant and extinct. He has been studying or teaching biological anthropology since he started his undergraduate education in 1995 at the University of Chicago. He got his Masters and PhD at Stony Brook University and has had a lot of interaction with other biological anthropologists and anatomists. Biological anthropology is a field that is hard to explain to others at times, so there are lots of jokes that only make sense if you know a lot about primates. I asked B for one such joke and he told me the following:

Q: What do ayes-ayes and celebrities have in common when there are paparazzi around?

A: They like to show off their middle fingers!

Ayes-ayes (pronounced eye-eyes) are relatively small, nocturnal primates that have an elongated middle finger that they use to tap trees and extract little bugs to eat (See attached picture). They pretty much look like drowned rats and used to be classified as rodents, even though we now know that they are actually primates. This joke is “funny” because their middle fingers make it look like they are flipping off the camera, just as some celebrities do to paparazzi. A lot of the humor in this joke comes from comparing aye-ayes, which are pretty strange looking, to celebrities, who are usually very attractive. Other than flipping off the camera, aye-ayes and celebrities have nothing else in common.

While this joke is somewhat funny, even B acknowledges it is pretty bad. The usual reaction is a cringe face because the joke is so bad yet entertaining to think about. This joke will not make sense to anyone who does not know the basic features that aye-ayes have, and the joke is not funny enough to bother explaining to anyone who doesn’t already know about their middle fingers, so this joke is pretty much only told to other academics who focus on primates.

The picture attached was found on arkive.org. (Zoos don’t usually have aye ayes, so I do not have any of my own pictures and neither did B) Clicking on the picture will link to the arkive.org page on aye ayes.

The middle finger is longer than the rest