501 Great Jokes for Kids 8 TO 88: Clean jokes

This is a joke book clean enough to do your laundry. It is for young people 8 to 88. A little history, please: Jokes are written, spoken, or done with physical actions such as a Pratt fall. Some are stories, gags, pranks, play on words, quips, japes, irony, or sarcasms. Whatever their method, jokes are done for the amusement and laughter of friends, family, and onlookers. Human laughter uses the abdominal muscles and releases endorphins; natural chemicals in the brain that make people feel good. Laughter helps people to cope (called "survivor humor") during difficult times in their lives. Jokes have been around since 1900 B.C. The oldest joke was about farting from ancient Sumer. The oldest joke in Britain is a 1,000-year-old double-entendre. There are stereotypes: the absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath, black humor, and sarcasm. Professional humor and mathematical jokes are a form of in-joke, designed to be understood only by insiders in the field. Other stereotype jokes are blonde, Jewish, Arky, Polish, and religious. Self-critical humor targets the storytellers as laughing at themselves. Expected jokes are funny in them-selves. An elephant joke is a joke that is usually told in a riddle form. The Q&A joke, sometimes a common riddle, has questions like "why did the chicken cross the road." These often use a pun or a spoonerism linking two entirely separate concepts, and still some jokes require a straight man.