“Knock-knock”

As if written in scripture, pulled from the dead of night, dug up from the ground, fallen from the sky, delivered by stork, UPS, Fed-Ex, Western Union, telegraph, telegram, covered in sand, gleaming as gold, wheeled in on a stretcher, zipping by in an airplane, on the wings of a dove, on the blubber of a whale, like passed gas never passed, or shaving cream on the face that’s all too real, jokes have become the punch line for our all too serious lives. And even though too often too many of us don’t do what we need to in terms of lightening up, still the joke plays on. Finding a new home in the busted gut of a new victim playing in a new way on a new stage allowing the only answer to the question be:

“Who’s there?”

What comes next is anybody’s guess, but the point is that no matter how funny or not your joke telling is being interpreted, there’s always another ear who’ll be tickled to hear your joke.

Funny jokes are like mothers; everybody’s got ‘em, but we all aren’t always laughing…? No? That’s alright, I got a million of ‘em! If you’re interested there are little calendars, desktop memos, or emails that offer up a “joke of the day;” which is fine so long as you don’t go skipping ahead. That’s not funny.

Jokes are ways we relieve stress, let out frustrations, eliminate cares or concerns and rev up our dinner conversation. Everyone likes a funny joke teller; you’ve just got to be careful not to go too far overboard. If you do, you might lose your audience.

Clean jokes are always better than dirty spouses (“ba dum dah!”) and are certainly appreciated better than the alternative by mothers and nuns the world over. But the truth is that the funniest jokes often are not clean, as they speak to a sub current of what we’re all thinking and feeling but don’t always say.

For spurned lovers, a good time to reach out to an ex is when you’ve got a good Valentine’s joke and it’s mid February. This can often make the spurned feel better and help bring about closure to a messy entanglement that had a bad ending.

Kids jokes are often short so younger people with shorter attention spans can follow them and have general humor in them that an older person might not find very funny anymore: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” comes to mind in a pinch. It’s so bitingly simple and the first time you heard it, you probably busted out laughing.

Really funny jokes, though, often shine a light right back in our faces and leaves little room for missed direction. There is a biting exactitude to the supposition that the funniest things are often the truest.