The Bubbles Joke
When I was a kid, I loved the Bubbles joke. Here it is, in its entirety:
Wanna hear a dirty joke? A kid fell in the mud.
Wanna hear a clean joke? The kid took a bath with Bubbles.
Wanna hear a dirty joke? Bubbles was the girl next door.
I laughed hard at that joke as a kid, way before I understood what it meant. Until I was nine I thought that his next door neighbor was literally a bunch of bubbles, and the thought of having a female neighbor who is made up of bubbles was completely hilarious to five-year-old Sean. Thirty-year-old Sean finds that notion pretty humorous also, but he has concerning adult questions about a female made up entirely of bubbles, such as how this bubble woman would be able afford life insurance since she can seriously go at any time, and what popping her che… forget it.
It seems like back when I was growing up, dirty jokes were fewer and far between. Don’t get me wrong, I heard my fair share. But they seemed more rare than they are today. Maybe it’s because adults back then kept them out of earshot from kids. I doubt that though. It was the 80s. The adults were too preoccupied with trying to keep their mustaches out of their mouths and their cocaine habits a secret to worry about kids hearing a joke with the word ‘boobs’ in it.
Now every joke I hear is a dirty joke. Maybe not so much in that it involves sexual content, but in that it is something that should not be repeated in public, at a job interview, or to anyone associated with the church. If someone above the age of 10 but under the age of 70 tells me a clean joke, I just stare at them, waiting for the word ‘balls’ to come out of their mouth. Then I tell them the one about the Russian who went to the strip club covered in poo.
(That’s not a real joke… but I really wish it was. If you can think of a punchline, please email it to seanssabbatical@gmail.com. Make the subject of the email, “Punchline for the joke about the Russian covered in poo going to the strip club”)
Because it was a rare treat to hear these types of jokes when I was growing up, to this day nothing makes me laugh more than cuss words and jokes about wieners, which is probably why I enjoy South Park so much.