The winning joke this week was a model of understatement:
Q: What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
A: Where's my tractor?
Personally, I found it very humorous, but there were some kids who expressed considerable dissatisfaction at the selection. One outspoken young man had submitted a "yo mama" joke that was in his estimation a "million times" funnier than that.
His joke went like this: Yo mama is so fat, that when she wears red, people call her Mr. KoolAid.
As the class listened in on our conversation, we set aside the inherent offensiveness of that type of joke, and I tried to reason with him from a language point of view, suggesting, for example, that maybe including the "Hey Kool Aid!" slogan from the commercials would have made his joke more successful, but he wanted to hear nothing of it.
"You know," I said, "that other joke is a good example of what we're working on in our writing. It really reveals a lot about the character of the farmer. Clearly he's a no-nonsense guy who doesn't mind stating the obvious."
He shook his head in disgust and walked back to his seat.
"Wait," I called after him. "I know how to fix your joke! What did the farmer say about yo mama?" (Is it necessary for me to say that I did not mean his actual mother? We all know that, right?)
He whirled around suspiciously and narrowed his eyes at me.
"She's fat." Everyone laughed, even him.
That farmer could come in handy.
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