I was told that I needed to come up with a joke for this thing, and I’ve always been one of those people who messes up the punchline, so I figured I should probably prepare for it.
So I went to a bookshop and found a good joke book, to try and get some inspiration, or just plain steal a joke to use.
When I got home, I realized I’d accidentally bought a thesaurus. As you can understand, I was pretty crushed… upset… disappointed… vexed… disconcerted.
I‘ve spent the last five months traveling so, rather than tell a joke I thought I’d tell a story about one of the people I met.
So I’m in Cambodia, chilling at the beach and meeting people, as you do, chatting away and drinking. One of the guys I meet is Jurgen. He’s as wide as he is tall and he has this fantastic big belly that sticks out like a barrel. But that’s not what stands out about Jurgen. No, what stands out, is the enormous tattoo that he has written across his torso, over his belly. Five letters. One word. PIZZA.
So as we’re drinking away and getting to know each other, my mind keeps wandering back to the tattoo. What’s the significance of it…What does it mean? Does it represent his social commentary on the state of the world? Is it a pet name? And the longer we sit there drinking, the more determined I am to work it out. So eventually, after a lot of beers, I pipe up the question.
“Hey, Jurgen” “Yes, Dan”
“Can I ask a question?” “Of course you can Dan”
“What does the Pizza tattoo mean… Is it a childhood nickname? Does it have some kind of symbolic or deeper meaning?”
And Jurgen puts down his beer and looks and me and just says, “No, I just love Pizza.”
My housemate is a huge Richmond Tigers fan. Now the Richmond Football Club in Melbourne hadn’t been in the grand final since 1982 (way before she was born) so this was a big deal for her.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t expected them to make it to the grand finals (after all, they never had made it in her life so far) so when she was planning her wedding she had picked that same spring afternoon.
Devastated as she realized she couldn’t possibly do both, she resigned herself to making the difficult choice, the only choice, and posted on Facebook “If anyone would like to take my place this Saturday, 2 pm at St Mark’s Chapel, let me know.”