The Jokes

This is the root of some evil.

      I told you that Mark was fond of racist jokes that we didn't really understand, I should make clear that they were not of the brutally mean variety. They usually focused on a misunderstanding based on a stereotypically black pronunciation of a word or phrase. We didn't know any black people so where he got his information was a mystery to me. The following is an example of a joke that killed in our demographic. Be warned there is a long set up and a small payoff but these jokes usually are that way. Here it is:

These two guys decide they would like to have some nachos but they don't have any money so they hatch a plan to steal the chips and cheese. The first guy steals the tortilla chips without any trouble but his partner in crime comes back with some Swiss cheese . The chip thief straitens him out and tells him to go and try again. The cheese thief goes back to the cheese store and waits outside to snatch a cheese bag from an old lady and run back with the loot. This time he got some mozzarella and chastened he heads back for the third time when a black man comes out of the cheese store our villain snatches his bag and runs back to his friend who tells him he got it wrong again. The robber is indigent because when he snatched the bag the man he stole it from yelled, 'That's nat cho cheese boy!'


    Skillfully told to a couple of eight and ten year old boys this joke absolutely killed. Most of the others were heavy-handedly scatological or simply relied on the shock value of a swear as the punchline. There was also a massive amount of Polish jokes and there were guys who would memorize thousands of them and recite them Ad nauseam. I remember people describing a person as 'a guy who knows millions of Pollock jokes', as a compliment. It seems like sometime between when I was a kid and my kid's generation the story joke style has faded from use. While they are still around I rarely run into a guy who knows a bunch of jokes like I used to.