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Scandal at Silver Lake
 Lately
I’ve been falling afoul of the
Joke Police. It’s nothing new for me. I had my first serious run-in with
them nearly half a century ago, in 1958, when I was twelve and I nearly got
my entire Boy Scout Troop —  Silver Lake.
At first I
thought it fell under the heading of hearty masculine humor, twelve-year-old
division. One night in the privacy of our tent, feeling quite the raconteur, I
told my patrol a poop joke. By today’s standards, not too raunchy,
perhaps. In the intervening years, happily, the joke has held up well. I recently
told it to a nine-year-old and got a gratifying response, including a demand
for an immediate encore.
It seems
there is this hotel — stop me if you’ve heard this one —
along the Rio Grande, and in the morning the desk clerk asks the American
customer if he’d like a fresh sheet on his bed. When the American
says yes, he puts the same question to a Mexican customer, who replies
fiercely, “Eef you sheet on my bed, I keel you!”
Now you
may not think that’s very witty, but you’ve probably never
heard it told by a twelve-year-old master raconteur who can deliver it with
genuine Latino fire. I can report without immodesty that it was an unqualified
success in our tent. Danny Lupinski seemed to enjoy it most of all. He nearly
choked. (He’s probably telling it to his grandchildren by now.)
The next
night, after dark, when all the troops assembled around the big campfire,
each patrol was supposed to present a humorous skit. Danny suggested that
we dramatize “my” joke. Sensing trouble, I demurred. But by
popular acclaim, I was overruled. Danny himself insisted on playing the
Mexican. What an ego.
At last the
moment of truth came, and Danny was giggling so uncontrollably that he
could hardly deliver the big line (see above). The role called for more
restraint — a de Niro, perhaps. But he finally managed to blurt it out. It
won a mixed reaction. The Scouts loved it, but Credit? My
ears burning, my heart pounding, I tried to shrink invisibly into the evening
shadows. Thanks a lot, Lupinski, you stupid dope! I told you guys not to do
this!
![[Breaker quote for Scandal at Silver Lake: Reader discretion advised -- as usual]](2007breakers/070313.gif) Then,
predictably — if you’ll pardon a multilingual pun — the
sheet heat the fan. Nowadays
the ACLU would have taken up our cause like a shot, but in the summer of
1958, shortly after the height of the McCarthy Era, few Americans believed
that the First Amendment protected poop jokes. Constitutionally, we
hadn’t a leg to stand on.
Disaster
was finally averted, but our Scoutmaster, Thanks to
From the
perspective of 2007, it may seem that I had told an offensive and highly
insensitive ethnic joke. But at the time, it seemed like an innocent foreign
accent joke, like the one about the boy who asks his teacher, who is French,
for permission to go to the bathroom, and she says, “Oui
oui,” so he says, “No — pou-pou!” Get
it? You should hear Joe Pesci tell it.
Joseph Sobran
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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