The Penguin Joke

A professor at the College of Optometry in NYC once told me what he referred to as his favorite optometry joke.  A man on his deathbed was being comforted by a palliative care physician who offered, “We will do everything we can to make your last moments as comfortable as possible.”  “I must see my optometrist,” the hospice patient said.

The optometrist was summoned and when he entered the room he was ushered to the bedside.  A weak finger beckoned him still closer until his ear hovered just above the dying man’s lips.  “I just have to know,” the man whispered with his penultimate breath, “Was it ‘one’ or ‘two’?”

Now I suspect that optometry jokes comprise a pretty slim volume.  I know of only one other and it has the same punch line.  The joke in fact consists of only the punch line, the set-up story around it is true.

A former student of mine is an astronaut and piloted a shuttle mission to correct the blurred vision of the Hubble Telescope.  With a gaggle of astronomers waiting anxiously in Houston for a successful repair, the message to the ground from the space-walking mission specialists was, “Which is better: one.. or two?”

But there’s a more sparse genre, penguin jokes.  Granted, there are lots of jokes that feature penguins, yet I claim there is only one “pure” penguin joke.  There are “walked into a bar” jokes populated by penguins—a penguin walks into a bar and asks the bartender, “Was my brother in here?” “I don’t know,” says the barkeep, “what does he look like?”—and “nun” jokes, often off-color, which intersect on my Venn diagram with that variety of categories.

There are zoo jokes, where penguins stand in as the generic captive species.  A driver with a car full of penguins is pulled over and instructed to take his cargo to the zoo.  The same driver & car is stopped the next day still full of penguins this time wearing sunglasses.  “I thought I told you to take them to the zoo, “says the cop. “I did,” replied the driver, “today they wanted to go to the beach.”  (duh-thump)  Works just as well with two zebras in the back of a taxi, IMO.

In unadulterated penguindom there is just The Penguin Joke.

The Penguin Joke is not only unique as essential penguin, it focuses on just what humor is: the recognition of an unexpected link between two seemingly unrelated contexts.  Humor is knowledge; the more you know, the more connections (of the unexpected kind in particular) you can make.  That glow in the belly just prior to the laugh exhale is the self-congratulating reflex of this recognition.   I remind my students of this whenever they whine, “Do we have to know this?”  The danger is of course, if you know an awful lot, everything is a freaking joke.

I first heard The Penguin Joke on “Prairie Home Companion” but I understand that Andy Kaufman used it on his “bomb tour” where he told incomprehensible jokes coupled with deliberately lame impressions exasperating audiences.  That was the joke of course, the juxtaposition of orthodox stand-up format and the inability to make the anticipated connections within the contents—a meta-joke if you will.  So brace yourself, here is The Penguin Joke:

Two penguins are standing on an iceberg when the first one comments to the second, “You look like you’re wearing a tuxedo.”  The second replies, “What makes you think I’m not wearing a tuxedo?”

Cue Crickets.

The appropriate response is a drawn-out “Oooh-kay,” a “huh?” or a Stan Laurel stare. But put this little repartee in a safe deposit box because it will, I guarantee, be one of those links between events that will surface and re-surface in the most unexpected circumstance.  Unlike just about every other joke, which stale with retelling as the surprise evaporates, “Peguin”—spectacularly unfunny initially, increases impact in repetition.

You will leave a restaurant and, standing under the awning in a torrential downpour have the more observant of the couple exiting behind you state, “It looks like it’s raining.” You will bite your lip stifling the urge to say, “What makes…”  and revel in the realization of knowing. 

My wife and I were stuck in traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway—a euphemistically named thrombotic artery connecting the lungs of New England with the heart of New Jersey.  It was a good time for slugs to safely cross the road as our lanes were motionless and there was zero traffic in the opposite direction.  Eventually we inched our way westward to encounter a surrealistic scene: a charred van, an overturned horse trailer, a jack-knifed 18-wheeler, a fleet of police cars, fire trucks and other rescue equipment, and a horse grazing nonchalantly on the fringe of the far lane. .  “Looks like an accident,” my wife whispered.

She winced realizing she new better (i.e. she knew The Penguin Joke), but too late.  “A tightly choreographed piece of performance art perhaps?” I suggested, straightening the bow tie of my tuxedo.

 

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