Fathers, Sons, and Bad Jokes

My dissertation advisor — we'll call him Dr. S from Purdue University — just arrived this afternoon in Boca Raton for the Jewish American literature symposium. And so, of course, after the last session of presentations, I decided to join him and a group of scholars for cocktails.

If you've never had cocktails with a group of academics, you're either in for a real treat or you're going to be bored out of your mind. Fortunately, my experience today was the former. After the first round of cocktails, Dr. S and a scholar from Penn State decided to have a "joke-off," where each would tell a joke until one of them had nothing left. And, though I had planned to blog about something completely different for this post, I couldn't resist hijacking one of Dr. S's jokes for Jewcy. So here it is (or the way I remember it), compliments of Dr. S, who, as a matter of fact, won the joke-off.

Jesus Christ is just kind of wandering around heaven. He sees St. Peter, standing at the gate. St. Peter needs to run a few errands, and so he asks JC to hang out at the gate for a little while, just until he returns. JC, of course, is like, no problem — I can hold down the fort until you finish all your errands. So St. Peter takes off and leaves JC at the gate.

After a little while, JC sees this little old man wandering around aimlessly, looking a bit lost. The little old man approaches JC, who asks him if he needs help. The little old man says, "Well, I'm an old carpenter, and I've been looking for my son for quite some time." JC's eyes light up. "Father?" he says, questioningly. The old man's eyes light up as well: "Pinocchio?" he says.

Funny, huh? Gotta love academics.