Poor and Stupid 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

I went to get my mail and saw a snail chewing an envelope.

I thought "Poor guy is confused".

So I picked him up and said "No, stupid. Lettuce. Not letters. Lettuce".

Back in the 90s, I remember playing some N64 after school when my dad came home from work. He comes into the living room and asks me what's up and, as a teen, I say "nuthin" and keep playing while he just stands there. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see he's looking at me with a stupid grin on his face that's he's trying to suppress poorly. Finally, he asks me to pause the game. I turn to him and he asks "You want a Hertz donut?" I obviously know this joke, but to make it worse, he's already making a fist, ready at his side. I roll my eyes and say "No, I do not want a Hertz donut." He just relaxes his hand and says surprised "Oh, you don't? You sure?" I say I'm sure and he says okay and walks back out to his car, leaving me to return to my GoldenEye. A few seconds later, he comes strolling back in the room, with a box of a dozen donuts in his hand, while he's eating one, with the same stupid grin on his face. On the box of donuts, "Dunkin" has been crudely crossed out and Hertz written beneath it in Sharpie marker. He walks into the kitchen saying "Guess you won't be having these Hertz donuts!" I'm in awe. I follow him into the kitchen and he finally relents and lets me take a donut. I ask him "So, you bought these donuts, and just put this joke together on the way home?" He says he thought of the joke earlier in the day at work and had to buy the donuts for the bit. I start laughing hysterically thinking about him sitting at work itching to leave to pull this off. As we sit there, quietly eating these donuts, he breaks the silence with a mouth full of donut, with "Had to stop at CVS to pick up a Sharpie too." I almost choked on the donut jimmies.

TLDR: Dad offered a Hertz donut, should've taken him up on it.

We're talking about actors and he goes "hear about that poor actress who was recently stabbed in NY?....Reese....Reese...." Stupidly I reply "Witherspoon!?"

He happily proclaims: "No! With a Knife!"