If You Giggle at ‘Uranus’, Read On...
Author’s Note: This is not a spoiler alert, this is more like ‘if you don’t like what I say next, do not read further.’
I want to emphasis, the following is childish, immature, and equates to the lowest form of comedy, and the jokes are about word-play and euphemism about body parts.
Here’s something everyone knows – men will always be twelve-year-old boys when it comes to stupid humor. Below are two examples, one long, and one quick and to the point.
#1
What follows is an actual conversation between a friend of mine, who was going through a divorce, and myself in a car ride back from somewhere in New Jersey.
For context, his soon-to-be-ex-wife at the time lived in Bangor, Pennsylvania.
Friend: I have to go see (insert his ex-wife’s name here) and I need to get to Bangor by four.
Me: (surprised) What?
Friend: I have to go down to Bangor by four.
Me: (perplexed) What happens if you don’t get to Bangor by four?
Friend: Well, then my father goes down to Bangor…
Me: (slight pause) Wow, you have a very generous divorce…
#2
If you giggle when anyone says “Uranus” keep reading…
One more caveat about this piece: it may all come down to ‘well, you had to be there’.
But, if you keep reading, that's on you.
Love trivia, always have, especially movie and television. It’s the benefit of having watched every old movie, and television rerun, in my lifetime. Of course, there is no real benefit to having this knowledge, except for bar trivia contests.
Fortunately for me, I’m part of a group that attends one such bar contest every Monday night. Not to brag, but we are pretty good at it and, of the three games each Monday, we win at least one and place in another.
It helps that between the five (sometimes six) of us, we have over three-hundred-years of collective knowledge.
We have a reserved booth, right off one end of the bar by the entrance. Some nights, depending who sits near that section of the bar, we have an interesting night.
Like the night a drunk shouted out each answer so the entire bar knew how smart it was. When I asked him to stop, his wife (I assumed) took five minutes (she was drunk) to extradite herself from the bar stool to apologize for her husband’s actions as he had too much to drink (truly a match made in heaven).
Or the time an older gentleman (The Professor, as I call him), a know-it-all who spoke non-stop to a young man and woman as he explained to them every question during the game. God bless this couple, all they wanted who to do was stop in for a drink and not learn the history of the world, one question at a time.
Then there was last week.
Two older women sat at the corner of the bar. I mean no disrespect when I say ‘older’ because I’m ‘older’, just trying to set the stage.
Between the second and third game, raffle tickets were distributed to each team, one to each member. There is a raffle and gifts are distributed. On this particular night, one of those ‘older’ women at the bar won a prize. It was nice, a fire pit packaged in a box, a box about three feet by three feet.
It was a nice prize for these raffles, normally the gifts were t-shirts or key chains or anything found in the bar’s storage room, so this prize was unusual.
Put that knowledge in your pocket, you will need it later.
The final game was played, and we won. When it was over, most people begin to leave. The older woman at the bar, the one who won the fire pit, gets off her bar stool and laments to the general crowd, “We didn’t win any games tonight.”
That’s when one of my friends at our table, with all the sincerity in the world to boast this woman’s spirits since her team didn’t win any games, shouted out for all to hear:
“Well,” he said, “at least you have a nice box.”
As the words left his mouth, he realized the double entendre he released into the air.
The rest of us at the table froze, and didn’t know where to look. With my back to the woman, my head dropped forward as I smothered my laugh.
I don’t think the woman heard, but I didn’t stick around to find out. Usually, when the game ends, I’m the first one out the door (long ride home).
That didn’t help, though.
I laughed on my ride home, and the next morning, and randomly throughout the next few days. Hell, I’m smiling while I write this. Also, whenever the word ‘box’ pops up in casual conversation now, I need to look away.
All in all, it was an interesting night.
It was good to be twelve-years-old again.
