My computer froze up again this week, so I called the help line. A nice young man answered and asked me what operating system I had.

I told him Methodist.

He was quiet a minute and then said, "Sir, I think we'd better start with whether it's plugged in."

Earlier This Week

Monday, September 20
People ask me if I miss climbing telephone poles for the phone company. I tell them no, not a bit. But every time the phone rings, I still look up.
Groan-o-Meter: 4 out of 5

Tuesday, September 21
My grandson Colby, who is seven, wanted to know why the phone in our kitchen has a cord on it. I told him it's so it doesn't run off. He's been giving his mother's cordless phone a funny look all week.
Groan-o-Meter: 5 out of 5 (June's favorite this month)

Wednesday, September 22
Went fishing at Keystone Lake with my brother-in-law. He caught four catfish. I caught a sunburn. On the way home I stopped at the grocery and bought four catfish so I'd have something to show. June picked one up and said, "Gene, these are frozen." I said, "Water was cold."
Groan-o-Meter: 3 out of 5

Thursday, September 23
The grandkids tried to teach me about their Pokemon cards. I asked which one was worth the most. They said Charizard. I asked what a Charizard was. They said, "Grandpa, he's an orange dragon that breathes fire." I said we had one of those in our family too. We called her Aunt Velma, before her coffee.
Groan-o-Meter: 4 out of 5 (Aunt Velma: 1 out of 5)

More in the Joke Archive: all of September so far, plus the best of August.

About Gene

I'm Gene Huffman. I spent 34 years with the phone company here in Tulsa, most of it up a pole, and retired in 1996. June and I have been married 44 years. We have three kids, six grandkids, and one cat who thinks she runs the place, and she's not wrong.

When I retired, my son-in-law set me up with this computer so I'd "have a hobby." I started sending a joke every morning to the family, and then the family started sending them to their friends, and now there are 212 folks on the list, from right here in Tulsa to my nephew in the Air Force over in Japan. My son-in-law put the jokes on this page in January of 1998 so I'd quit asking him how to forward.

The Rules

1. Every joke has to be clean enough to tell in the church fellowship hall.
2. Nobody gets made fun of but me, my family, and Oklahoma weather. They can all take it.
3. Most of these I make up myself, in the truck or over coffee with the fellows at the Braum's. Some the grandkids hand me. If I heard one somewhere, I tell it my own way.
4. If June doesn't laugh, it doesn't go up. (She laughs at about half. The other half, she says "Oh, Gene.")
5. New joke every weekday. I take Saturdays and Sundays off, like a union man.

Get the Joke by E-mail

Want a joke in your mailbox every weekday morning? Write me at [email protected] and put "Sign me up" in the subject. It goes out about 6:30 a.m. Central, after my first cup and before my second. To get off the list, just write "Enough, Gene," and I'll understand. Nobody ever has.