Growing up, I would often repeat jokes my father told. Most of them were inappropriate ones I overheard him tell adults. It is a shock I was never suspended from school.
Sometime between 3rd-5th grades, however, I wrote my first original joke.
I wrote the joke specifically for a contest with a grand prize of a trip to Disney World. I cannot exactly remember who sponsored the contest, but given the prize, I think it was Disney Adventures magazine (to which I was a loyal subscriber).
“I have to win this,” I thought to myself. “The joke has to be clever, different, and not anything like that Laffy Taffy crap.”
I thought long and hard, but no joke I came up with seemed like a winner.
One Saturday morning before the deadline, my dad was putting on his clown makeup for a parade. Oh, did I mention my dad was a Shriner clown?
Anyway, he started to apply adhesive onto his clown nose.
“Is that rubber cement?” I asked.
“No, it’s called spirit gum.”
“Spirit gum, that’s strange. It’s like gum for ghosts. Gum for ghosts. What’s a ghost’s favorite gum flavor – spirit…MINT! Spiritmint!”
I ran to find my mom so we could enter the joke into the contest over the phone. She was talking to a neighbor outside. I thought I would test my material on someone outside of the family.
“I wrote a joke for a contest. What is a ghost’s favorite gum flavor?”
“Um, booberry?” my neighbor replied.
I scrunched my face with disgust. Booberry? That was just stupid. I hated it with a passion and did not know why until I learned with word ‘hack.’ Even before I knew the term ‘hack,’ as a kid, I knew ‘booberry’ was hack.
“No, it’s spiritmint.”
“I kind of like booberry. What if you change it to booberry?” said my HACK neighbor.
“Mom, we need to talk when you’re done here.”
My brother wanted to enter the contest, too. I gave him one of my B- jokes to enter. “What amusement park can you find the Tea Cup Ride? Dizzy World.”
Neither of us won the grand prize, but I did get an honorable mention, a t-shirt, and a passion for a field full of rejection.
UPDATE:
My brother just read this post and commented on Facebook with this update:
“Co[p]pertone was the sponsor. Dizzy world was gold, this dizzy little world just wasn’t ready for it.”