My First Joke (That I Can Remember)

I submitted everything for review, so the Kindle edition of Holy Laughter! Humor in the Bible should be available on Amazon within 24 hours! For only $9.99.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I’m remembering my first joke.

When I learned to talk, one of my first jokes was:

“Bug up there! Bug up there!”

I don’t even get the joke, but my parents sure thought it was funny. Because they still retell it to this day. And that sure is humiliating when you’re a grown man; and the one thing that your parents love to talk about is when you saw a bug on a wall.

“Our oldest son pastors a large church in California. Our daughter writes a popular cooking blog while raising two lovely daughters. And our middle child, well, when he was little, he saw a bug climbing on the wall.”

For the record though, this is the first joke I remember creating:

In first grade, my teacher Mrs. Runion told the class a joke where the punchline was the word décor meaning decorations, but it was used in the joke to also mean the core, meaning the core of an apple; and to be honest, none of us got the joke, but I did learn from her explanation how you could use the prefix “de” for the word “the.”

At the time, ABC’s Wide World of Sports was just starting out, way back when with Howard Cosell; and they had the line “The thrill of victory; and the agony of defeat.” So I came up with my first joke that I can remember that would really qualify as a joke on purpose:

“The agony of defeat -- that’s athlete’s foot.”

Blessings & Joy,
Dean