A Joke I Have Tried to Share

A Joke I Have Tried to Share

I wrote a joke last summer while I was working at the Bronx Zoo in 102 degree weather for a Bloomberg corporate recreational event. 

Our job was to walk around, find a big cart, try to find something to put in the big cart, try to find something small to put in a small cart, and then take both carts down and back the length of the three mile zoo. We got an optional voucher to eat at the zoo for lunch, which I did, despite the alternative option being quite, much better. Unfortunately, the zoo food is my favorite part of going to the zoo, and it did make me sick.

My manager, Eleanore, was about my age if not older, and presented to me a constant state of flux between faux enthusiasm at my work ethic and disappointment at my burgeoning incompetence. It was through her foggy glasses that I learned the flags for the scavenger hunt I had just erected in record time were placed backwards, leading guests to finish the activity shockingly early.

At the time, I had called her on Whatsapp to clarify which direction the flags should be facing, to which she responded, “North”. I had assumed that meant “forward." My mistake had destroyed whatever confidence I had in myself as a well equipped production assistant in charge of large swaths of zoo land and so I had relegated myself to a single location, waiting for managers with lighter temperaments to ask me to complete more feasible tasks for the directionally challenged.

It was here, across from a tent housing an adult finger painting station for Bloomberg executives, where I wrote my most confusing joke. It goes like this:

Two police officers receive a 911 call.

"Help! help! my son is drowning!" A voice cries out from the other end.

"Why don't you get in there and fish his ass out?" says one officer.

"One problem: I can't swim!" Says the caller.

"Sorry lady, I was talking to the jackass next to me!" The officer responds,

"His brother is on a sexual fishing trip! And he's very competitive!"

It would be three months until I told this joke to another human in earnest. I was at a karaoke bar that served as a second location from the wells of a basement improv comedy show that I had performed poorly in. Shirley, Sue, Stanley and I were blasted enough to forget to request any songs to sing and I felt I had the floor to entertain in order to make up for my ill-conceived improv scene in which two men waited at a bus stop and talked about the weather a bit. This is something I do when I feel bad about myself.

“I don’t understand what this is supposed to mean,” Shirley said. 

“Well it’s a joke. It’s not supposed to mean anything,” I responded, washing my sweater in a lost sip of Chinese IPA.

“Yes, but what’s a sexual fishing trip?”

That’s kind of part of the joke. It’s probably not a common event, but I imagine the phrase, “why don’t you get in there and fish his ass out” would be good advice for somebody who’s on a sexual fishing trip.

“Especially because the second officer’s brother is very competitive,” I added.

“But I don’t understand who’s talking to who,” Stanley added—astutely!

“The first officer is talking to the second officers brother,” I explained.

“But who’s in the room? Is the second officer’s brother in the room? He’s supposed to be on the trip," said Shirley.

No, that makes sense. That’s a good point. Thinking back to my time at the Bronx Zoo, post-zoo-food (pulled pork hot dog bun),

“I guess I must have assumed that the second officer is on the phone as well, with what the audience initially believes is a second 911 call. But crucially, he’s actually talking to his competitive brother, who’s on a sexual fishing trip. I suppose the first caller, while on the phone with the woman, whose son is drowning, was just so wrapped up in the second officer’s conversation, whose circumstance he must have some prior background knowledge of considering the esoteric nature of a sexual fishing trip, that he felt the need to chime in."

“What’s the joke?” Sue asked in the most kind way. She really didn’t seem annoyed at all, nor did anyone else. Stanley reiterated to me later that week that everyone had really been bewitched by the whole thing, and that they were truly interested in what thought process could have led me to believe that this joke was in any way comprehensible, or funny.

“I think it’s because the audience assumes that the first officer is talking to the woman whose son is drowning, but his advice to “fish his ass out” was actually directed towards the second officer’s brother, who, on the other side of the second officer’s telephone, is probably feeling doubtful in his ability to perform—

“What does that even mean? to ‘fish his ass out’? And in the context of a sexual fishing trip, which is a very nebulous concept that you haven’t fully defined—”

“It sounds sexual,” I explained.

“Fish his ass out,” Stanley repeated the phrase.

“Yeah. Fish his ass out."

We talked about this for the next three weeks. Stanley, Sue, and Shirley had all invited me to perform it again in front of a captive audience at one point or another, to gauge their reaction, to see if anyone would get it. Nobody has laughed upon first telling.

“It is interesting,” Stanley once told me, “that people always seem to laugh once you start explaining it.”

“Do you think once I explain it, it sort of clicks for them?” I asked. 

“Not at all. I think it’s just because you actually wrote it.”

I am being completely honest here when I say that, four months from conception, I do actually still think the joke is funny. I understand the joke hinges upon a reality that requires multiple mental leaps that are near impossible for anyone other than myself to reach, and I understand that there is critically not enough information here to set that process in motion. Still.

There’s probably a better joke in there somewhere, and maybe this blog post is worth more than the joke itself, but I just want to say to everyone reading that I had the most wonderful experience at the Bloomberg Executive Bronx Zoo retreat last summer and I would be absolutely thrilled to be hired to do more events like that as I am currently unemployed.