Day of the Old Joke

July 24 is... 

Tell an Old Joke Day!

 

We all know someone for whom every day is Tell An Old Joke Day. In fact, that person is probably known as 'a joke waiting to be told'! Jokes are fun bringing on smiles, especially when smiling is the last thing on a person's list. July 24 is a day to put aside any reticence and let rip your own ‘I say, I say, I say’ and ‘Knock, knock’ chestnuts. If you think back to the first joke you ever learned to tell, there is a huge possibility it was a 'Knock, Knock' joke. What about a Blonde joke or one of the Polack jokes? Which ones do you recall?

‘I say, I say, I say’

Here's the original, 'I say, I say joke':

My wife's gone to the West Indies
-Jamaica?
-No, she went of her own accord.

There are many variations on this old joke that have been passed around for decades upon decades. No matter how many times it is told someone will hear it for the first time, smile and/or laugh.

'Knock, Knock'

The exact originator of the 'Knock, Knock' joke is officially unknown. However, many scholars point to the second act of Shakespeare’s Macbeth—written around 1606—as the earliest known example.

 

Blonde Jokes

18th-century French courtesan Rosalie Duthé,
history’s original “dumb blonde.”

French courtesan Rosalie Duthé is credited (or discredited) with starting the dumb blonde meme way back when in late 18th-century Paris. A trained ballet dancer and favorite escort of French royals and fashionable circles, fair-haired Duthe was not unlike a blonde Kim Kardashian of her day, famous for being beautiful, famous and slow-witted. In 1775, a one-act play was written involving Duthe that emphasized her trademark long, vacant pauses during conversations, and the dumb blonde joke went public.

Two blondes were driving down the road. The blonde driving looks at her friend in the passenger seat and asks her to see if her blinker is working. So the blonde looks out the window and says, ''Yes. No. Yes. No.''

Polish (Polack) Jokes

Ethnic jokes about "new immigrants" may play on various negative stereotypes; in the case of early Polish jokes told by Americans, a  remark on intelligence was a particularly frequent cliché. An example of a Polish joke told by TV media was: "Why can't they make ice cubes in Poland anymore? -- Because someone lost the recipe."

A bar customer asked the bartender if he wanted to hear a Polack joke. The bartender pointed to a large man at the end of the bar and said, "He's Polish." Then the bartender pointed to a burly policeman near the door and repeated, "He's Polish." The bartender finished, "Now think about whether you want to tell that joke, because I'm Polish, too." The customer replied, "I guess I won't tell that joke after all. I'd have to explain it three times."

Tell An Old Joke Day is your opportunity to raise the nervous wreck from the quivering depths, bring the awful-smelling noseless dog back in from the cold, and press the button for the chicken stuck forever at the pedestrian crossing. Like any endangered species, old jokes must reproduce if they are not to die out entirely, and the old ones are supposed to be the best, anyway.

There may be a lot of groaning from initiates, but there’s no joke so old that at least one person hasn’t heard it yet. Why should they be allowed to escape the suffering of the rest of us?
  

 

Have you heard the one about...

Check these out:

Oldies but Goodies. Kinda.

Really Funny Jokes