The informant is a second year student at the University of Southern California, studying History. He is from Chicago, IL, and he lived abroad in Rome when he was younger. At USC, he is involved with student affairs and television production.

This is the informant’s favorite joke.

“This kid, he’s at an amusement park. And so, he really wants to go drink some Coca Cola. Alright? So he’s wandering through this amusement park and he’s looking for a booth of some sort where he can drink Coca Cola. So he goes up to this one booth and he’s like, “Excuse me, sir, do you have coke?” And the guys says, “I don’t have coke, is Pepsi okay?” And the kid says, “Of course not,” and he walks away because Pepsi is an inferior drink.

Um, so then, he goes over and he goes to another booth. And so he’s like okay, alright, maybe I can get a coke here. And the guy says, “I’m sorry, we’re fresh out of coke, but then you might want to check the booth right down the street.” So he goes, “Oh, son of a bitch” and he keeps walking. So he keeps going, he goes to this next booth, and that booth is also out of Coca Cola.

So the guy tells him, “You know, there’s a—you can go to the convenience store that’s down the street, and the convenience store should have something.” And so he exits the amusement park, goes down to the convenience store because he just really wants a Coca Cola, right? He just really wants it bad. So he goes down to the convenience store, and when he gets to the store front, there’s a sign on it. And the sign says, “Sorry, we’ve moved.” And gives him an address about three blocks north. Sorry, 30 blocks north. My bad.

Um, so he goes, “Well shit, that’s a lot of walking I’m going to do.” And then he starts walking because this guy isn’t very bright, clearly. So he keeps walking, and walking, and walking, and walking, and he’s going farther and farther and he’s getting really really tired and he’s getting thirstier and thirstier. And the guy appears to him on the street, and he’s got a little thing of water. And he says, “Would you like some water, sir?” And the kid goes, “No. I want that Coca Cola, damnit.”

And the hobo goes okay, and just lets him pass. So he keeps walking, and he’s gone about 10 blocks by this point, so he goes to the next roadblock. Which is this woman standing in front of him, and she tells him, “You’re looking really dehydrated. You need to drink some water.” And he says, “I don’t want water, I want Coca Cola, damnit.” And the woman refuses to let him go, so he ducks under her legs and he keeps going.

And then he keeps going down block after block after block and he’s on the 25th block. And then he’s basically dragging himself on the ground. He’s sweating, he’s tired, and he hears someone ask, “Do you want a drink?” And he says, “No, I want that Coca Cola, damnit.” So he keeps going, and he drags himself the last five blocks to the convenience store. And then the convenience store is closed.

And so he’s basically just up the river without a paddle. And then he sees—because at this point, he’s—he’s gone 30 blocks. He doesn’t care about the coke anymore. He cares about getting any form of liquid that has sugar in it into his body. So then he sees a stand that’s advertised as punch, right? And it’s only a dollar, so that’s actually a really big bargain. And the stand is far away on a hill, so he starts trudging towards it. And trudging towards it, and trudging towards it. And so, you know after a certain point he decides maybe I’ll take the bus.

So he gets on the bus and takes the bus down four blocks, until the bus driver refuses to let him off. And he goes, “Why are you refusing to let me off?” And the bus driver says, “Because you look really sick, and I’m going to take you to the hospital.” So the kid hits the bus driver right in the face, knocks him out, gets out of the bus, and he’s finally at this knoll that has the punch booth. Except he keeps walking around and walking in circles and walking in circles and he just can’t seem to find the punchline.

That’s the joke.

The point of that—let me contextualize, so the point of that joke is that you start of with the premise of a kid with the coke thing, and see how long you can keep going before they realize that this joke is going nowhere. And because you’re doing it for a school assignment, it’s perfect because you have to listen to the entirety of it.”

Analysis:

While the informant describes this piece as a joke, it is also reminiscent of a tale in several ways. As with Propp’s morphology of the folktale, the narrative surrounding the joke includes, among other elements, a lack/absence, a departure, a quest, and a scorned gift. The structure of this joke lends itself to this format well; the purpose of the joke is to string the listener along for as long as possible, so it becomes important for the performer to keep the audience engaged with the story that leads to the eventual “punchline.” Because this piece is quite long and performed orally, using a familiar narrative structure from folktales would help the performer remember what happens next, whether or not the performer is aware of this similarity.

Additionally, the punchline, or lack thereof, gives this joke a different intention. Instead of provoking laughter, the joke inspires more of a benign exasperation, an acknowledgement of a trick well played. It might even feel like a subtle prank. The informant seemed to relish the opportunity to string me along for as long as possible.