Who Starts These Things?

You've heard them dozens of times: around the water cooler, at home, work, on the street, in casual conversation ... they're everywhere.  Jokes.

I was watching an episode of Friends, the characters Chandlier and Ross were arguing about a certain joke, each were claiming fame to it's creation.  Ross submitted it to a mens magazine and earned himself $100, but Chandlier thinks it was stolen from him.  Anyway, this post is not about Friends.

After this little episode, my mind began to meander.  I've heard them dozens of times, "A guy walks into a bar ...', 'A woman goes to the doctor ... ", " a trombone, a squid and an abacus were sitting on the beach ...' and I began to wonder, where do these jokes come from?  I've heard so many they all seem to meld into an oozing, messy cloud of dirty things.

It's no secret they come from somewhere; someone has to start them. They don't just pop into existence.  Our weeknights are filled with comedy-esque television shows.  Situation Comedies (sitcoms) that place relatively normal people in akward situations where something unthinkable will happen.  It makes us laugh.  People like to laugh, it lets down our emotional guard and relaxes us, as a species.  I wonder if other animals know how to laugh.  I could easily imagine monkeys screaming at their tire swing in a zoo. With their human-like features/expressions, they would seem to laugh but, do they really feel the joy of a good, deep-down, belly-aching laugh?

I digress to wonder if I could come up with a joke.  I wanted to know if I could create an original "funny thing."  Rather than plagerize the efforts of other joke-makers, I want to create one of my own.  Afterall, someone has to come up with this stuff.  Could it be a full time job, I wonder?  Is there a hopeless writer wandering around the streets looking at stuff and writing these jokes?  I would hope not.  We shouldn't have to pay someone to come up with a joke and make us laugh, but we do anyway, and in large doses.  We pay for our cable bill so the cable company will air funny shows and someone writes the jokes in those funny shows and they need to eat, sleep in a comfortable bed and pay the maid to keep the secret about their mistresses (hmmm, not funny.  What is a male mistress?  A mist-er?)

At first I didn't think my little challenge would be very hard.  Friends and colleagues comment on my clever wit.  But can I invent a simple joke?

After a few hours of deep thought and wording, this is what I came up with:

"A woman asks her doctor, ..."

That's it.  I got nuthin'.  Hours of trying to come up with a joke and I've got nothing.  I've found without a doubt that I'm not funny.  Maybe a few hours was too little time.  Maybe telling myself a joke is futile because there's no suspense or suprise to the akwardness of the punchline because, I know the punchline.  Maybe I couldn't think of a joke because different things are funny to different people.  Who knows?  It seems to be an ongoing investigation.

I called my brother and gave him this mission and he responded enthusiastically.  He imagined a play on words would be the way to go and I've yet to hear his joke.  But since then, he's encouragingly sent me quite a few zingers.  here's one he heard just today.

"A 12 year old boy asks his dad what a vagina looks like. The dad [replies] 'Before sex or after?'

'I guess before.' says the kid.

'Well," says the dad, "it looks like a flower ready to blossom.'

'What about after sex?' asks the kid

The dad says 'Have you ever seen a pit bull eating mayonaise?'"

This was funny.  Who thought of it?  Who knows, but I'm not giving up.  I plan to continue this little experiment and I invite all the readers to try this, too.

Try to come up with a joke, one that you've never heard before.  Don't cheat because that doesn't help anybody.  Lets see how funny you can be.