Final Cut for Real Puns

Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.

But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."

It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.

You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.

In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.

This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un

He cuts the tail of one of them and that works for awhile, but it eventually grows back. So he cuts the mane off the other one and that works, too, but that grows back and once again he is stuck.

Finally he decides to measure the horses and discovers that the black one is a foot taller than the white one.

[real joke told to me by my dad]

There once was a man who had a job driving a passenger train between two large towns. It could be a very dull job to some, but as the old saying goes, one man's trash is another's gold; he wanted to be a railroad man since he was a boy.

He was a wiz behind the controls of the train, and commanded the 15 car vehicle effortlessly as if he had been born to do the job. He prided himself on the fact that he could bend the rules and speed through curves and grades that made other motormen shiver and back off.

One day however, he wasn't so lucky and came round a bend too fast and derailed his train. He backed off the throttle and braked as much as he could, managing to only have one fatality out of 500 passengers on his train.

Months later there was a trial and he was found guilty of manslaughter in the highest degree, a capital offence in that land, and sentenced to die by electric chair. Punishment came swift, unlike most places, and 3 days after sentencing the former railroader was asked for his last meal.

"I'll have a banana," "Just a single banana?" said the perplexed guard. "The warden will grant you a feast and all you want is that?"

"Just a single banana." he said.

After he downed the fruit, he was strapped into the electric chair an hour later.... The warden hit the switch, lights flickered, and the crackle of electricity could be heard for over a minute...

...but our train jockey instead rose from the chair looking more like he got a stiff massage, rather than be put to death! Well in that nation, the law of the land states that if a man somehow survives being put to death, they must be set free...

...And so it came to pass that our engineer was let go...

And for whatever reason, he got his job back!

So he was back railroading again doing the job that he loved. You'd think he'd have been more cautious with this second chance he'd been given, but you'd also be wrong. Speedy Gonzales with a train license decided to gun his locomotive to hard and send it off the tracks again!

Of course, this time he was tried for the same crime, but at a different time (his was a fair commonwealth and double indemnity was simply unheard of!) So fair was their nation, that the jury came up with the same judgement and punishment. So three days later, when asked for his last meal, the engineer simply said "I'll have 2 bananas..."

Not less than 60 minutes after consuming the last morsel was he strapped into the chair and the switch thrown... And....

NOTHING.

So, my dad could be considered a regular jokester. He had his dad jokes, his dirty jokes, clean but provocative joke, setup jokes, everything. He never missed a chance to turn something into a joke for hinself, even, and perpahs especially, if it only amused himself. I found out at an young age that no situation is too serious for him.

I was around 9 years old and I was in the cub scouts, and it was box car derby season. I was in the dining room, carving away at my block of wood when the blade in my right hand skipped the wood and carved my left thumb. It fucking hurt and bled like a sonofabitch. I immediately starting screaming and my dad raced into the room and found me covered in blood, my left hand now with two thumbs. We get it wrapped and he drives me to the emergency room. By the time we got there the bleeding had stopped and I have stopped crying. As we pull up, my dad looks st me, shakes his head and says "We can't go in there like this, we'll end up waiting forever to see a doctor. You need to cry once we're in there and that'll help" I said ok, and he said as we were walking up, "I'll give you a signal to start crying." How will i know, i asked him snd he just said i'll know. We go inside and walk up to the admittance desk. I'm short, so at the time my head just cleared the desk. My dad tells the nurse that we have a cut, and need to see a doctor right away. The nurse pushes paperwork at him and he tells her again, this time that its a real bad cut. The nurse finally looks at me for the first time and she frowns, because im relatively normal looking, even though im hurting and nervous, waiting for my dads signal. My dad pulls me back a bit and her eyes widen really big when she sees all the dried blood caked on the lower left side of my body. She starts getting excited and says "Ohmygoshohmygosh" over and over and this point im starting to get scared when my Dad, in a serious voice says "Its even worse than it looks! You're going to have to take the whole hand!"

Then I start crying.