Marie Antoinette Posted:

Okay, so I heard this one on the way to a cross-country meet in probably 10th grade. So not only is it a dumb joke, it’s an old joke that I can probably only half remember and am just pretty much making the rest of it up. Anyway:

There’s this town where every year a traveling comedian comes by and puts on a show. And every year it’s pretty much the same show, where for the final act, he picks on the town fool and makes him cry.

So the first time this happened, it went like this: The comedian asked the audience if anyone wanted to volunteer. And the town fool (of course) volunteered. So the comedian asks him, “are you a horse’s head?” And the fool answers, “no.” He asks, “are you a horse’s hoof?” And he says no again. He seems kind of confused. So the comedian says, “well then, you must be a horse’s bum! AHAHAHAHAHA!” And the crowd loves it and goes wild, and this makes the town fool cry.

But the town fool is determined not to be made a fool of again, so he preps himself for the next year and tries to figure out the comedian’s clever trap. So the next year, again he volunteers for the final act, and the comedian asks, “are you a horse’s mouth?” And he thinks and says, “um … no.” He asks, “are you a horse’s tail?” And he thinks some more and says, “well, no.” And right away the comedian says, “well then, you must be a horse’s bum! AHAHAHAHAHA!” The crowd goes even more wild than they did the year before, and the fool cries even more.

So this time, he really wants to get that comedian. He wants to shame him and make him feel like ****. So he goes for a whole year to the School of Snappy Comebacks and practices hundreds of them. He mumbles them in his sleep, he tries them out on strangers, and his teachers are pretty impressed.

So the next year, before the comedian can even get out the whole sentence, “do we have a volunte-”, the fool shoots his hand up so that he can be sure to get up there and show that comedian what he can do. He bounces on his toes like he’s Rocky and waiting for a hit. So the comedian starts in, “Are you a horse’s ear?” and he confidently says, “no!” He asks, “well, are you a horse’s neck?” and he says, “no!” And then the comedian says, “well then, you must be a horse’s bum! AHAH-” and the town fool interrupts with, “wait!” and everybody is silent. And as the hundreds of snappy comebacks rush over him and he struggles to find the right one, he blurts out, “**** YOU, CLOWN! ****. YOU.”

.

THE END

You told that joke all wrong. You’re missing several dozen pages of his training in the field of Snappy Comebacks, more and more outlandish depictions of the clown’s feared power, and basically-just-making-the-story-last-at-least-15-minutes-before-you-finally-get-to-the-anticlimax.