Date Collected
Winter 12-2017
Place item was collected
Hyde Park,Utah
Informant
Zach Hamp
Point of Discovery/Informant Bio
Zach Hamp is a 22-year-old student at Utah State University from Hyde Park, Utah. We went to Sky View High School together and attended the same congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He enjoys movies, certain video games, and having fun with friends.
Context
Zach and I were talking in my living room in Hyde Park when I recorded this conversation. My parents were in the other room so there was quite a bit of background conversation, but Zach knows my family, so he was comfortable. We have been friends for at least nine years and so during the whole talk we were laughing and reminiscing about funny high school stories. Zach said that he really likes this joke because of an experience in a class that he shared with our friend Paul and a kid named Rylee. Zach and Paul liked to tease Rylee because he was a kid that got super annoyed when he was disrupted, but would be easily distracted. So Zach and Paul would tell him stupid jokes to confuse and distract him, normally to success. In this particular story, Zach had told Rylee another anti-joke, which made Rylee get a bit annoyed, so Zach responded with this joke.
Text
How about one more joke? It's a knock-knock joke.
- [Mimicking Rylee] Ok, fine.
Ok, you start.
- [Mimicking Rylee] Knock-knock
Who's there?
[describing the situation] And then he's like, 'Hey!'
Texture
When Zach told this joke we both laughed pretty hard, not necessarily at the joke itself but at the situation and Zach's attempt to mimic Rylee's reaction. This joke is more intended as a sort of anti-joke – a joke that is usually funnier to the teller than the listener because the teller gets to see the confused reaction of the listener trying to understand the ridiculousness of the somewhat anticlimactic punch line. It's a simple joke more used to tease the listener or to make other jokes sound better.
Course
Intro of Folklore - ENGL 2017
Instructor
Lynne McNeil
Semester and year
Fall 2017
Theme
G4: Jokes
EAD Number
3.12.1.42
Recommended Citation
Perkes, Tanner, "Reverse Knock-Knock Joke" (2017). USU Student Folklore Fieldwork. Paper 86.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/student_folklore_all/86