My mother is one of those people who loves to forward emails to everyone she knows. When she first started doing this, she had absolutely no filter whatsoever. So I would get messages from her urging me to forward the message on to 50 people and I would receive money from Bill Gates. And I would get messages warning me not to flash my headlights at anyone or I would get shot as part of a gang initiation. And so on. Eventually I taught her how to look things up on snopes.com, so then I was merely left with bad jokes, conservative political rhetoric, and pretty much anything else that wasn’t obviously falsifiable from a cursory look at Snopes. It got to the point where I pretty much deleted most emails from my mother immediately without even reading them. That actually paid off, because I ended up deleting a legitimate message from her (on accident). When she asked about it, I told her how I tended to delete her messages since they were, well, terrible. So for a while she removed me from her email list. I know from other relatives that she did not stop forwarding messages, and I made more than one of them jealous that I had managed to escape it. But at some point years later, for some unknown reason, she added me back to the distribution list. AND she had stopped checking Snopes vigilantly. This is the current state of affairs. So needless to say, 99% of the email I receive from my mother is 1) not written by my mother and 2) stupid.
Today, however, for the first time that I can remember, she forwarded me a joke that I thought was funny. I know I’d heard a variant of this joke at some point before, but I’m not going to hold that against my mother. If all of her emails had jokes of at least this caliber, then I would be more enthusiastic about reading them. Without further ado, here is today’s joke:
Tom had been in police work for 25 years. Finally sick of the stress, he quits his job and buys 50 acres of land in Alaska as far from humanity as possible. He sees the postman once a week and gets groceries once a month. Otherwise it’s total peace and quiet.
After six months or so of almost total isolation, someone knocks on his door. He opens it and a huge, bearded man is standing there.
‘Name’s Cliff, your neighbor from forty miles up the road. Having a Christmas party Friday night. Thought you might like to come at about 5:00…’
‘Great’, says Tom, ‘after six months out here I’m ready to meet some local folks. Thank you.’
As Cliff is leaving, he stops. ‘Gotta warn you. Be some drinkin’.’
‘Not a problem’ says Tom. ‘After 25 years in the business, I can drink with the best of ’em’.
Again, the big man starts to leave and stops.
‘More ‘n’ likely gonna be some fightin’ too.’
‘Well, I get along with people, I’ll be all right! …. I’ll be there. Thanks again.’
‘More’n likely be some wild sex, too,’
‘Now that’s really not a problem’ says Tom, warming to the idea. ‘I’ve been all alone for six months! I’ll definitely be there.. By the way, what should I wear?’
‘Don’t much matter. Just gonna be the two of us..’
