The first joke that I remember is the one that my mother told me in the second grade. It goes as follows:

Once there was a man who had a wooden eye. (Don't ask me why, the poor guy couldn't afford glass, so it was made out of wood.) As a result he was painfully shy and very lonely. His friends told him that he had to go out, to meet people, and finally convinced him to go to a dance. At the dance, he stood at the punchbowl, by himself, until he noticed a young lady with enormous ears standing alone by the wall. "Gee," he thought. "She isn't dancing either -- I'll ask her." He approached her and said, "Excuse me miss, would you like to dance?"
"Would I!" she replied.
"Big ears! Big ears! Big ears!" the man shouted.

The next day I repeated it to my second grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson. She let me tell it front of the class. If I remember correctly, the response was absolute silence. This is an appropriate beginning to any comedian's career. That, or everyone from the pretty girl Shannon to Alan, my crush who would end up being the eighth grade fat kid who'd steal the cookie from your cafeteria tray and get away with it through the silent intimidation of his mass, and even Julie, the girl who ate paste in a transparent cry for help, already knew that the pun is the lowest form.

It couldn't conceivably have been the delivery.

I have since heard a version in which the young lady has a hare-lip and the man shouts, "Cunt face! Cunt face! Cunt face!" I have not asked my mother if she has heard this version. My mother is primary among the influences on my sensibility, but I have assured her that I will not tell anybody. She embroidered elaborate flowering gardens around the cuffs of my jeans, but had to include a dog turd (three french knots of brown satin floss). As any proud six year-old would, whenever I wore them I immediately had to point out the dog turd to anyone who admired the handiwork. Once we went to the beach and she made some nudist sunbathers instead of the more conventional sandcastle. It was my job to go find mats of chartreuse seaweed for pubic hair. (She was a server at a local buffet during high school, and the staff had amused themselves by sculpting obscene garni out of olives, gherkins and parsely for the hot table.) Occasionally, she would call me back to the dinner table with an expression of dire seriousness or imminent scolding, and then de-pants me and erupt in laughter. I stopped falling for it some time before puberty. She also had a formal studio portrait taken for my father's desk at work of her well-coiffed impeccably dressed self wearing a Steve Martin-style plastic arrow piercing her temple. A decade later, the family sent me off to college with a group portrait in which they were all protecting their identities with paper bags. More recently, it was Groucho Marx noses. In two photos from the wedding reception for my practice marriage my mother and I reflexively execute the same gestures: in one, we shield our faces from the photographer with out-turned palms. In another, we balance floral arrangements on our heads. Characteristic ambivalence.

When I went home to visit this Thanksgiving, she said, "I don't understand this comedy thing. Why can't you just work at a law firm and be content to publish your writing when you can? There's nothing wrong with that."

The first time my father asked my mother out, she asked, "Is this a joke?"

Meet the punchline.

Erika Mikkalo