Just this morning I called Dave Barry to tell him of something I had just discovered, while reading emails from readers whom I had asked to tell me about the first dirty jokes they had ever heard as youngsters.
As might be expected, there's lots of research into dirty and especially inappropriate, jokes or humor. Turns out sexist jokes, for example, have been shown to desensitize individuals to the problematic content of the humor, which they find offensive if included in a straightforward statement or message. Of course, couching inappropriate content in a joke is a way to make many reluctant to call out the joker for fear of being thought of as humorless or not being able to take a joke --- certainly a stereotypical predicament for women. Because humor also functions as a form of social dominance as well as a mode of ingroup bonding, boys and men may face a different kind of pressure to play along, we're told.
One of the first dirty jokes I heard was “rubber balls and liquor.” Another was the man who called a whorehouse during Vietnam and asked them to send a girl to him because he was a veteran who lost his legs in the war. The madam asked whether he wanted her to have small or large boobs, and he said, “Doesn’t matter, I lost my arms too.” The shocked madam asked, “Are you sure you’ve got a dick?” He answered, “How do you think I dialed?”
Two Pulitzer Prize winners having a wireless trans-Atlantic discussion about Johnny Fuckerfaster and Susan Laystill would, I think, make Marconi very happy.
That joke reminded me of a rather clumsy one that I probably heard in 6th or 7th grade. A certain "Dr. Bendit" tells a patient to go into the examination room, take off all her clothes, and stand with her back to the wall. To conceal his intentions, he turns all the lights off, enters the room (naked), and rushes toward her, but misses her in the dark. She asks, "Dr. Bendit?", but he replies, "No, I think I broke it."
“I remember being super perplexed when I heard it because even at age 8 or so, I knew women didn't have balls, so the joke didn't make any sense to me.”
I hope you’ve matured since then and now acknowledge some women can have balls.
A man and a woman start to have sex in the middle of a dark forest. After about 15 minutes, the man finally gets up and says, "Damn, I wish I had a flashlight!" The woman says, "Me too, you've been eating grass for the past ten minutes!"
It's not a dirty joke per se, but when I was about 5 I thought the height of comedy was this extremely-mildly-dirty alternate-lyrics version of the Popeye theme song:
I'm Popeye the Sailor-Man,
I live in a frying pan;
I turn on the gas --
I burn off my ass --
I'm Popeye the Sailor-Man!
5-year-old me couldn't even get to the "dirty" part, as I would invariably collapse into uncontrollable laughter somewhere around the "turn on the gas" line.
I heard a version of "rubber balls and liquor" in about 4th grade. I seem to remember breasts being referred to as balls in that stage of our education. In fact, when sometime later a bully said he was going to hit me so hard my balls would jingle, I was tempted to say "I don't have balls, stupid", but didn't. Luckily.
So I heard a variant of the first, nonsensical joke, in which you had to answer every question with "Ketchup and rubber buns," which at least has the virtue of making sense when the last question is "What do you do if you see a pretty woman walking in front of you?"
The 'rubber balls and liquor' reminds me of the one that always makes my mother giggle. She is from the era where there were wood stoves heating houses and she would ask "What are the three parts of the stove? Lifter. leg, and poker."
I remember there were a lot of Dirty Ernie and Dirty Johnny jokes about the bad kid in class that was always getting into trouble. I'm remember the punchline of one of them that you had to use your hands to show the size:
I believe the "joke" behind "rubber balls and liquor" was the fact that they were trying to trick you into answering the last question without thinking about it. Wen asked what you do with your girlfriend, if you actually said rubber balls and liquor, the one telling the joke would then announce to everyone else in earshot that you just admitted your girlfriend was a boy and that you were gay.
The stupid joke that went around my grade school: a foreign man arrives in the U.S. but he doesn’t know any English. He approaches a stranger and points at one of the airplanes on the runway. “Take-off” the person tells him. Then he goes to the zoo and learns “zebra.” While there he sees a kid in a stroller and hears it called “baby.” Later he meets a beautiful woman and tries to impress her with his English and says (you have to do this in a bad accent) “Take off ze-bra, baby!”
Gene, the Greek man joke does indeed make sense. Greeks are supposedly known for favoring a different orifice because of the history (whether true or not) of even supposedly straight Greek males in ancient times having sex with each other.
Oh, I see now why I thought you said it makes no sense: It was because your next paragraph says, “Three different people, including my editor, Tom the Butcher, remember this as their first dirty joke; the astonishing thing is it makes no sense whatsoever, but is clearly ubiquitous.” When I first read this paragraph, I assumed you were making a comment on the Greek joke, but I see now that you were referring to the following joke (Rubber balls and liquor). The joys of ambiguity — there has to be a filthy joke in that! :-)
As might be expected, there's lots of research into dirty and especially inappropriate, jokes or humor. Turns out sexist jokes, for example, have been shown to desensitize individuals to the problematic content of the humor, which they find offensive if included in a straightforward statement or message. Of course, couching inappropriate content in a joke is a way to make many reluctant to call out the joker for fear of being thought of as humorless or not being able to take a joke --- certainly a stereotypical predicament for women. Because humor also functions as a form of social dominance as well as a mode of ingroup bonding, boys and men may face a different kind of pressure to play along, we're told.
I would love to hear or read non-sexist dirty jokes where men are the butt (ahem) of the humor.
One of the first dirty jokes I heard was “rubber balls and liquor.” Another was the man who called a whorehouse during Vietnam and asked them to send a girl to him because he was a veteran who lost his legs in the war. The madam asked whether he wanted her to have small or large boobs, and he said, “Doesn’t matter, I lost my arms too.” The shocked madam asked, “Are you sure you’ve got a dick?” He answered, “How do you think I dialed?”
Two Pulitzer Prize winners having a wireless trans-Atlantic discussion about Johnny Fuckerfaster and Susan Laystill would, I think, make Marconi very happy.
That joke reminded me of a rather clumsy one that I probably heard in 6th or 7th grade. A certain "Dr. Bendit" tells a patient to go into the examination room, take off all her clothes, and stand with her back to the wall. To conceal his intentions, he turns all the lights off, enters the room (naked), and rushes toward her, but misses her in the dark. She asks, "Dr. Bendit?", but he replies, "No, I think I broke it."
“I remember being super perplexed when I heard it because even at age 8 or so, I knew women didn't have balls, so the joke didn't make any sense to me.”
I hope you’ve matured since then and now acknowledge some women can have balls.
A man and a woman start to have sex in the middle of a dark forest. After about 15 minutes, the man finally gets up and says, "Damn, I wish I had a flashlight!" The woman says, "Me too, you've been eating grass for the past ten minutes!"
It's not a dirty joke per se, but when I was about 5 I thought the height of comedy was this extremely-mildly-dirty alternate-lyrics version of the Popeye theme song:
I'm Popeye the Sailor-Man,
I live in a frying pan;
I turn on the gas --
I burn off my ass --
I'm Popeye the Sailor-Man!
5-year-old me couldn't even get to the "dirty" part, as I would invariably collapse into uncontrollable laughter somewhere around the "turn on the gas" line.
My own version at that age:
I’m Popeye the sailor man,
I live in a garbage can,
I look at the boobies and eat all the poopies,
I’m Popeye the sailor man!
I heard a version of "rubber balls and liquor" in about 4th grade. I seem to remember breasts being referred to as balls in that stage of our education. In fact, when sometime later a bully said he was going to hit me so hard my balls would jingle, I was tempted to say "I don't have balls, stupid", but didn't. Luckily.
So I heard a variant of the first, nonsensical joke, in which you had to answer every question with "Ketchup and rubber buns," which at least has the virtue of making sense when the last question is "What do you do if you see a pretty woman walking in front of you?"
I heard this one, but with "ketchup and liquor" as the answer.
Oh, a trip back to grade school. When I learned that boys were, indeed, weird.
The 'rubber balls and liquor' reminds me of the one that always makes my mother giggle. She is from the era where there were wood stoves heating houses and she would ask "What are the three parts of the stove? Lifter. leg, and poker."
I remember this one from childhood:
Say "Mother, may I" then spell cup.
I did and was shocked at what came out of my mouth.
Never taught that to anyone else or repeated the story.
I remember there were a lot of Dirty Ernie and Dirty Johnny jokes about the bad kid in class that was always getting into trouble. I'm remember the punchline of one of them that you had to use your hands to show the size:
Rat, Rat, Big Fucking Rat
Balls like this and a dick like that.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Official_Dirty_Johnny_Jokebook.html?id=sYxRnQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description
I believe the "joke" behind "rubber balls and liquor" was the fact that they were trying to trick you into answering the last question without thinking about it. Wen asked what you do with your girlfriend, if you actually said rubber balls and liquor, the one telling the joke would then announce to everyone else in earshot that you just admitted your girlfriend was a boy and that you were gay.
The stupid joke that went around my grade school: a foreign man arrives in the U.S. but he doesn’t know any English. He approaches a stranger and points at one of the airplanes on the runway. “Take-off” the person tells him. Then he goes to the zoo and learns “zebra.” While there he sees a kid in a stroller and hears it called “baby.” Later he meets a beautiful woman and tries to impress her with his English and says (you have to do this in a bad accent) “Take off ze-bra, baby!”
Gene, the Greek man joke does indeed make sense. Greeks are supposedly known for favoring a different orifice because of the history (whether true or not) of even supposedly straight Greek males in ancient times having sex with each other.
I was not implying it made no sense!
Oh, I see now why I thought you said it makes no sense: It was because your next paragraph says, “Three different people, including my editor, Tom the Butcher, remember this as their first dirty joke; the astonishing thing is it makes no sense whatsoever, but is clearly ubiquitous.” When I first read this paragraph, I assumed you were making a comment on the Greek joke, but I see now that you were referring to the following joke (Rubber balls and liquor). The joys of ambiguity — there has to be a filthy joke in that! :-)