The Old Jokes

Old Jokes

1.

Where do they go the old jokes? The Sumerian howler—”Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

Up the chimney they go.

It’s safe to say almost no one laughs at the residue of smoke.

2.

But we do. Farts. Smoke. Bad breath. The old jokes tell us we ought to weep.

And poor old Freud who had no sense of humor and wrote and wrote and wrote about the matter.

3.

“You go first” was in fact the first joke.

4.

When a friend was dying I told her I’d just come up with punch lines, minus the tedium.

“OK,” she said. “Show me.”

“I’m not that kind of a pig,” I said.

Punch lines don’t need support.

5.

Sometimes I think dogs invented the first jokes because of their noses. We can only approximate dog words. All their words are hyphenated. Grey squirrel standing in gorse. Muskrat nibbling on chicory.

6.

Don’t forget last words. Oops. The finest epitaph.