A Productive Day -- With Refined, Tasteful Jokes

Tuesday my friend Wes called inviting me to breakfast at Dave’s Dinner where we shared jokes and laughed so hard I thought we get kicked out.

Wes tells it far better than I can but the gist of one story goes like this:

This church (it could be any church but let’s say Trinity Wall Street) needed a new preacher so the vestry had this young man deliver a trial sermon.

He mounted the pulpit and said, “In the beginning a sower went forth to sow and he sowed on the Mount of Olives and he came down from the Mount with the Ten Commandments engraved on stone and he saw this tower and the wicked Jezebel was up there with her servants and the sower called forth, “Fling her down” and the serveants flung her down. And he called again, “Fling her down” and they flung her down again. And he called a third time, “Fling her down” and they flung her down again. And that softened her up so that dogs would lick her fingers whereas they wouldn’t before. And she became the tenth virgin with oil in her lamp and the meaning of this story is that you should write your congressman about the Oil Depletion Allowance. Amen”

The deacons met to discuss the sermon and the vestry chairman said, “Well, he is young and he’s not too eloquent, but that boy sure does know his Bible!”

Wes also told this tale he heard from his friend from Brazil. I’d never heard of it before but apparently there is some tension between Brazil and Argentina.

A Brazilian and an Argentinean found a magic lamp on the beach, rubbed it and a genie appeared offering to grant each a wish.

The Argentinean said, “I want to be back in my own country and I want you to build a wall around all of Argentina. I want this wall’s foundations so deep no one can dig under it. I want it so think no one can break through it. I want it so high that no one can ever get over it. This wall will prevent any Brazilian from ever getting inside.”

Immediately it was so. The wall appeared.

The genie asked the Brazilian what he wanted.

He said, “Now fill it with water.”

So I told two genie jokes too. The first, as I recall, is a Yiddish joke:

A man finds a lamp, rubs it and the genie tells him, “I can grant your wish but whatever you wish for, your worst enemy gets double what you get.”

“You mean, if I wish for 30 pounds of chopped liver…?”

“Yes, your worst enemy will get 60 pounds.”

“If I wish for a million dollars, then he gets two million?”

“That’s right. He gets double whatever you get.”

The man thought of all the things he might wish for, but it all soured when he thought of his neighbor getting double. Finally, he arrived at an answer.

He said, “I want a woman to wife, one whose sexual drive and desire will exactly match me at my best. That’ll fix him!”

Then I told the one about the office manager:

An office manager, a secretary and a clerk went out to lunch and as they walked back they found a lamp at the curb. They rubbed it and a genie appeared offering to grant one wish to each of the three.

The secretary said, “Hawaii! Hawaii! I want to be at a luxury resort with an umbrella drink in hand and admiring surfers gathered around me.”

Immediately she disappeared.

The clerk said, “I’ve never been to the Bahamas. I want to lounge in a hammock by the sea, with tropical breezes and cloudless sky.”

Immediately, he disappeared.

The genie asked the office supervisor, “Now what is your wish; I can give you anything you want.”

The manager looked at his watch and said, “I want those two back in the office by one o’clock!”

Wes picked up the printer’s proof copy of his great-grandfather’s autobiography. That book will be ready to publish as soon as he proofreads it.

My neighbor Rex supplied gas and mower for me to mow the strip at our community’s entrance where we planted flowering trees over two separate years, so I spent much of the afternoon pushing the mower through the high weeds. In one place I encountered a large bed of wild onions; as the mower trimmed the tops, they gave off a lovely aroma.

When I returned the mower, I sat in Rex’s yard smoking my pipe and scratching Spot’s ears. That collie believes that God put me on this earth for no other purpose than to scratch his ears. And who knows, maybe the dog knows more about the divine will than I do. There are less worth reasons to exist than scratching a dog’s ears.

Then I came home and instead of working, I indulged myself reading the Diary of John Bright, an English Quaker and member of Parliament who kept a daily journal for 50 years during the mid 1800s. I found it really pleasurable reading history just for relaxation instead of research.

So, I didn’t do a lick of work today, but all in all I’d say I spent a very productive day — at least Spot thinks so.