We have, on occasion, shared knock knock and other jokes at the dinner table, and most of them are not especially funny, which makes us laugh the harder.
I mean, my oldest used to memorize them from joke books and retell them. Then, my youngest, who did not grasp humor really, would try his own, and we’d get something like:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Boo.
Boo who?
Boo YOU!
That brought tears to my eyes, and I could not stop laughing, because that has an actual knock-knock joke punchline, and he did not use it.
Friends of ours related how their children made up their own non sequitur punch lines that also involved giant chickens in some fashion; at Nogglestead, the giant chickens at the door were doing crazy things and ruining your property values. These, too, punch above their actual humor in how much we laugh at them.
Last night, I debuted a new one I wrote, well, last night:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Rookie law enforcement official on my first no-knock raid. Oh, dammit!
Nobody laughed, so I guess that’s another one to not send to Reader’s Digest.
