At work, there is a “Joke of the Day” every morning. It’s a nice tradition. It gets almost every day off to a good start. Some recent examples are:
What do you call a broke Santa?
St. Nickel-less
and
What do you call Kris Kringle when he’s standing still?
Santa Pause
As you can see, comedy gold. Seriously, though, it makes me chuckle almost every morning. Today was different, though. And it really bothers me.
Why does it bother me? Well, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “I get jokes.” Only today, I didn’t. I’ve been thinking about it since 8:00 this morning, and I just don’t get it. I work in a middle school. It shouldn’t be too sophisticated for me. I’ve even spent a bit of time studying jokes and humor. I love jokes. But this doesn’t make any sense to me.
Today’s joke was:
What material does a New Yorker like to make his pajamas out of?
Yawn
I’m not familiar with yawn being a type of material. And I can’t think of any material that even sounds similar to yawn. It did cross my mind that maybe, kind of, sort of saying yarn with a New York accent, it could sound like yawn sort of, a little bit. But it doesn’t really, and yarn isn’t a type of material anyway. I also tried thinking about a yawn as a sign of boredom, but I can’t find anything there. It can’t be a variation on a Shaggy Dog Story, the setup is too short. You yawn when you’re tired and you wear PJs when you’re tired. That’s a connection between the set up and the punchline, but that doesn’t make it a joke.
It’s probably something obvious that I’m just not seeing. I feel embarrassed even talking about this. But I have to figure it out. Please, someone explain this joke to me. Otherwise, I may never sleep again.
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