Joke Explainer

As I get older I remember all the people I’ve lost along the way I think to myself, maybe a career as a tour guide wasn’t for me. This joke is funny because of a pun - the phrase "lost along the way" normally is used to indicate that something was lost in the process of time, and when used in regards to people the reader expects that the people were lost due to the jokester growing apart from them due to time passing. The ending of the joke indicates that instead of the expected colloquial meaning for the phrase the jokester was literally losing the people that she (or he) was supposed to be leading on tours.

At a party, a young wife admonished her husband, “That’s the fourth time you’ve gone back for ice cream and cake. Doesn’t it embarrass you?” “Why should it?” answered her spouse. “I keep telling them it’s for you.” This joke is funny because the husband rudely lied to everyone and told them that his wife was eating a lot of ice cream and cake when he was actually the one that was eating so much ice cream and cake. When people are rude to each other it is often considered funny, and also when people lie it is also considered funny too.

It’s a 5 minute walk from my house to the pub. It’s a 30 minute walk from the pub to my house. The difference is staggering. This is funny because of a pun. If someone describes something as staggering, usually that indicates that it is shocking or surprising, but staggering in this case is used as a verb - one which means "stumbling around", because personally the jokester was walking home while drunk. People being drunk is also considered funny, so that might add to the humor of this joke. I will admit - I chuckled when I read this.

A kid tells his teacher "You only teach useless crap!" She replies "Don't be so hard on yourself." This joke is an insult and probably also an example of someone intentionally misunderstanding someone else. The insult is the teacher assuming that "you only teach useless crap" meant "the only people that you teach are useless and crap" instead of the more likely parsing of the sentence "the only things that you teach to people are things that are useless and crap". The reason why we know that the teacher made that assumption is because their statement "don't be so hard on yourself" is the teacher telling the student to not insult themself. The second parsing of the sentence is significantly more likely, so the teacher might have intentionally misunderstood it, and misunderstandings (intentionally or not) can be funny as well. I chuckled when I read this.

I've been trying to find an alarm clock made out of a potato... ...ever since I had a meeting with my boss about arriving late for work and he told me "Get a potato clock". This is a mondegreen (which is a phrase that sounds similar enough to another phrase that the two can be confused for each other). The thing that the jokesters boss actually said was probably "get up at eight o'clock", but somehow the jokester heard "get a potato clock" instead. All mondegreens are misunderstandings, so this is also a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding isn't really likely at all -in fact I would consider this joke to be entirely unbelievable and pretty terrible personally. The most likely reason to laugh at this joke is because it is so bad. I would consider this a dad joke.