Autres temps, autres blagues

It's always interesting to see different variants on the known, different perspectives on the familiar.

Julie Heyward, in a post yesterday which I have only read today, quoted a joke from Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life by Allan Kaprow:

A man commits a crime and is sentenced to life in prison. When he arrives at the prison gate, he is met by an older inmate who has been assigned to supervise his adjustment to prison routine. After he has checked in and been given a uniform, they proceed to the mess hall for lunch, where the new inmate is introduced to the other prisoners. They begin eating, and after a few minutes he hears someone say “Fourteen!” Everybody laughs. Then he hears “Eleven!” followed by good-natured groans. Then “Ninety-two!” and giggles. Then “Twenty-seven!” Howls and tears. This goes on through the whole meal.

The new man gets more and more confused. So he leans over to his mentor and whispers, “What’s going on?” The older man replies, “We’re telling jokes. But we’ve told them so many times that we know them by heart. So to save time, the jokes have numbers. That way we can tell a lot more jokes.”

The new inmate nods and realizes he’s going to be eating with these men for a long time and might as well learn the ropes. So he says, “Sixteen!” and looks around at everyone. Dead silence. He leans over again and says, “What’s wrong?” The older prisoner says, “Simple. You didn’t tell it right.”

Now ... I recognise that joke ... but in the version I heard in my late teens, and have retold at intervals since, it goes like this

A weary traveller in the Himalaya finds shelter for the night at a remote monastery.

At dinner, as everyone is otherwise eating in silence, a monk further down the long refectory table looks up from his soup and calls “Fourteen!” Everybody laughs. Then the traveller hears “Eleven!” followed by good-natured groans. Then “Ninety-two!” and giggles. Then “Twenty-seven!” Howls and tears. This goes on through the whole meal.

The traveller, puzzled, whispers to the elderly monk sitting on his right, “What’s going on?” and the other replies, “We’re telling jokes. But we’ve told them so many times that we know them by heart. So to save time, the jokes have numbers. That way we can tell a lot more jokes.”

The traveller thinks about this, then asks “Can I tell one?. The elderly monks says “Certainly; we'd like that”.

So, the traveller calls out “Two hundred and seven!!”

There is a moment of dead silence; then waves of hilarity start to roll around the room. Monks choke on their soup and have to be clapped on the back by their neighbours. Others fall out of their chairs and roll on the floor in helpless laughter.

The traveller is amazed. When the table has returned to something resembling normalcy, the noise subsiding to hiccups, snorts of suppressed laughter and occasional spasms of giggling, he turns to the elderly monk on his right again and asks “What was so funny about my joke?”

“Oh” says the monk, wiping tears from his eyes, “nothing, really ... but we hadn't heard it before!”

Same joke; different context; but also different point.

Fascinating.