The Problems with being an alleged humorist

I wrote this post, hit the publish button, read thru it, got existential doubts, deleted the thing, which by then had made it to the reader of @sandeip who told me, on twitter, that it wasn't all that bad, and that I had written worse. This persuaded me to republish it except that like the ass that I am, I didn't have a copy. This was provided by @sandeip, culled from his reader, and HE is the guy you have to blame for having the following inflicted upon you.

The missus calls me an alleged humorist, for a variety of reasons.

Her primary  one is that, in her opinion, I am never funny. Not intentionally, anyway. She rarely if ever finds any hilarity in my kind of humor. Especially the word-play kind.

"Hmm. So Dr. Spooner was suspicious of his wife's hair-dresser because he parted her hair."

"Er, yes"

"Meaning Dr. Spooner thought he had hearted her pair."

"Er, yes."

"Dr. Spooner being the one who said things like 'he went up the hill pantless and breathing' when he meant to say 'he went up the hill breathless and panting'?

I nodded.

"Droll."

'Droll' is missus speak for 'haakthoo', as you might have gathered.

Not that she's Bob Hope or anything herself. I caught her gossiping with one of her friends about another friend who had recently purchased a vineyard which she (the other friend) endlessly crowed about. As it happened, the vineyard seemed to  be having a run of bad luck with the crop.

"She had a unsatisfactory  yeild, I hear" said the friend.

"You must have heard it on the grape whine" said the missus and the two tittered along for a good ten minutes. I pointed out the sadness of that joke with a long, dejected stare at the two but they didn't seem to notice it.

The kids are equally bad. In addition to trying me out as a sounding board for all their silly jokes, they also tell me some of the grossest, most embarassing jokes ever told by 14 and 17 year olds to their greying father. It doesn't help that I am usually slow on the uptake.  

The silly ones are bad enough. Splattered across these blog posts are several prime examples but new ones keep coming all the time.

"Annie, why did the chicken jump from the back of one buffalo to the other?" 

This when I'm going through a lengthy mail from a customer reprimanding me for tardy delivery in fairly juicy language. But my kids are not easily shooed away.

"Ok, why?"

"To get on the other's hide."


Not to be outdone, the younger one piped up.

"Annie, why did the chicken go from one nagging woman to another?"

This seemed a bit unusual. I was intrigued.

"Why?"

"To get to the other chide."

"Guys, please. I'm trying to get some work done here."

"Annie, what is a panty raid?"

"What!"

"There it is. In your inbox. The subject of the mail from Victoria's Secret. Join us in a Panty Raid."

So it was. It's a long story, but has an entirely honourable explanation. But when you are caught flatfooted like that it can be awkward.

"Annie, why does Victoria's Secret send you mail?"

"Will you boys leave me alone?" I shouted in exasperation

"Annie", said the lad in a sad voice, "you know your problem? No sense of humour".