joke about a man who is sent to prison, and discovers that his fellow prisoners have a habit of saying numbers to one another—“Four!” “Seventeen!”—and then laughing uproariously. When he asks what’s going on his neighbor explains that they pass the time by telling jokes, but they’ve all been there so long, and with a limited repertoire of jokes, that they’ve found it easier to number the jokes and just call out the numbers. This makes sense to the new prisoner, so after a few moments of silence he says, “Eleven!” But no one laughs. He turns to his neighbor in puzzlement, and the neighbor
...more
