A couple of you have asked me to tell the penguin joke which ended my last blog post called “Mama Told a Naughty Joke”http://www.jdcombs.com/2013/03/mama-told-naughty-joke.html.  I’ll oblige you, but I don’t think it’s a joke my kiddos would appreciate.  I need to keep this one on the down low, so if we could just keep this between us I’d appreciate it.  😉

I told this joke to Stan while he was stationed in Bosnia.  Zach and I were living with my parents, and as was established in my previous blog my dad loves a good, raunchy, naughty joke.  He is the one who told this joke to me while Zach and I were living with them.  I didn’t get to talk to Stan very often back then.  The year was 1996, and email was just taking off.  I have a letter, an actual letter, from Stan where he is extolling the many virtues of this new fan-dangled thing called “email.”  Calls were few, far between and our time chatting on the phone was jealously guarded.  I made sure I knew what I wanted to say to him during our appointed phone call times, but this one time I veered off  topic and told Stan my dad’s joke….

One day, years ago, a penguin was driving down the back roads of America, checking out the sights.  As he was driving through Arizona the oil pressure light in his car came on.  He made it to the nearest town and found a mechanic.  The penguin explained what happened.  The mechanic assured the penguin he will be on the road again in no time and got to work on his car.  As the penguin settled in to wait for his car, he noticed an ice cream shop right across the street.  He hopped down off of his chair and headed out for an ice-cold, refreshing bowl of ice cream to cool him down on a hot, dusty Arizona day.  He ordered the biggest ice cream dish he could find on the menu and ate it as only a penguin can, by digging in with his beak.  Satisfied and cooled down a bit he headed back to the mechanic to see if he’d found his car’s problem.  The penguin walked up to the mechanic and said, “Did you figured out what’s wrong with my car?”  The mechanic turned around and said to the penguin, “It looks like you blew a seal.”  The penguin stuttered a bit as he wiped his mouth with his flipper and said, “Oh, no, no…that’s just ice cream.”

My dad’s propensity for dirty jokes has been indelicately passed on to me.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I have to pass it on to my kiddos, but after dinner the other night I don’t think there’s a chance in hell they’ll escape growing up telling bad jokes.  After all, one of the first jokes I ever told to them was “How do you catch a polar bear?”  The first time I asked them this I got a blank, confused stare as I delivered the punch line….The first thing you do is cut a hole in the ice.  Then you take a can of peas and line the outside of the hole with peas.  When the polar bear bends over to take a pea, you kick him in the ice hole….

Oh, for the love of my children….