Profound thought for the Task
A permanent energy of a pure and high frequency will arise between you and your partner, and nothing that is not love can survive in it.
– Eckhart Tolle
The Task: Find a funny joke. Print it out 20 times and post it through people’s letterboxes.
This task thrilled me and frightened me. I loved the idea of it, but the thought of having to go down the street and post things through letter boxes worried me.
Anyway first I had to find a suitable joke. As I can’t remember any jokes I had a quick trawl of the Internet. Obviously the joke had to be clean tasteful and not offensive in any way to any potential recipient. Preferably something like a Christmas cracker joke I thought. But cracker jokes aren’t that long – basic one-liners with a weak pun perhaps, and I wanted something with a couple of lines that was uncrackery or dad-jokery. This proved quite a task I thought it would be a good idea to search for jokes with a neighbourhood theme since I was going to post them through neighbour’s doors. Also ideally I wanted a joke I could adapt for our neighbourhood, or one that would look serious at first but then would puzzle people until they realised it was a joke. Only then (I presume) would they think “Who the hell posted this through my letterbox and why?”.
There are, as it turns out, thousands of neighbourhood related jokes online. But scrolling through them I realised it was not going to be an easy task. Lots of them are simple one-liners. Lots of them puns. Lots of them too rude or puerile to be used, or just plain offensive or illegal. Some of them would have confused people with lines like “My neighbour makes so much noise…”, or “the only thing wrong with my neighbour…” and other such lines that might be misunderstood or might start a neighbourhood manhunt because it’s taken for real. Eventually I found a joke that I liked. No mean feat. One that I could adapt. It was about a bloke that went into a pub so I could adapt it to be our pub the Rose and Crown and perhaps people would think that bit of paper pushed through their door was generally as social service or a flier or an invite to a local event or something from the God Botherers. However once adapted, the joke lost some of its punch I felt, and anyway it was far too long to print out neatly on a little bit of paper.
So I decided to go for a shorter joke, and after another couple of searches I found one that I found funny and which I could adapt just a little bit to make it sound semi serious. I typed it out and printed it out 20 times on to 2 A4’s, cut them into strips and put them in my pocket. Now I had to summon the courage to go out into the street and post.
Basically I didn’t want to have to converse with anyone while doing this. Not meet or bump into anyone, or get my fingers stuck in any letter boxes, or be seen doing it – just because I wouldn’t know what to say if asked “what you doing mate?”..
“Um I’m just putting a little joke through your letterbox”.
I suppose it would depend on what they said to me if challenged, or just how threateningly they chased me down the street.
I put on my lightest best trainers for running and ventured out into a rainy midday afternoon so I could have my hood up. It actually wasn’t that bad doing the deed. I avoided houses with lights on or noises within. The hardest part was putting a little folded piece of paper through an insulated highly sprung letter box. I would put my fingers through most of the time in order to make sure the joke got through. Now I’m back home safely I wonder if they’ll be great laughing coming from out of the homes up and down the street.
The Joke: Just a word of advice for anyone thinking of entering the snail racing competition this year. Please don’t remove their shells. This will make them sluggish.
A permanent joke of a pure and high frequency will arise between you and your neighbours, and nothing that is not laughter can survive in it.
