Go Ahead, Make My Day Puns

There was once a boy. He was the son of the richest man in the universe. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, he dwarfed them all. He was a multi-trillionaire. Now, it was this boy's birthday. His father asked him,

"My son. I am the richest man in the universe. I could buy you anything you want for your birthday. A store full of lego, all the video games in the world, anything. What would you like?"

His son replied.

"Oh father. It would make me the happiest boy in the world if you could get me one pink ping pong ball."

His father was rather confused by this request. Out of all the things he could've chosen, his son chose a ping pong ball. Nonetheless, he agreed and gave him a pink ping pong ball. His son was overjoyed and spoke to him.

"My father, you have made me the happiest boy in the world. May I go up to my room and play with my pink ping pong ball?"

"Okay son, go ahead."

The boy then went up to his room and played with his pink ping pong ball. When his father went in the next morning to check on him, the boy was sleeping in his bed and the pink ping pong ball was nowhere to be found.

On the boy's next birthday, his father asked him again.

"My son. I am the richest man in the universe. I could buy you anything you want for your birthday. What would you like?"

His son replied.

"Oh father. It would make me the happiest boy in the world if you could get me one box full of pink ping pong balls."

His father was again, confused by this. Still, he bought a cardboard box and filled it with ping pong balls. He gave it to his son, who said.

"My father, you have made me the happiest boy in the world. May I go up to my room and play with my pink ping pong balls?"

The father nodded, and the son went up to his room to play. The next morning when his father went to check, the boy was sleeping peacefully and there were no pink ping pong balls in sight. Just the empty cardboard box in the middle of the room.

On the boy's next birthday, his father asked him again.

"My son. I am the richest man in the universe. I could buy you anything you want for your birthday. What would you like?"

"Oh father. It would make me the happiest boy in the world if you could get me one truck full of ping pong balls."

Now, by this point, the father was extremely confused. Why did the boy want so many pink ping pong balls and where were they going? He asked.

"My son. You are the most precious thing in the world to me and I can certainly get you this, but may I ask, why do you want

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