Thursday is Joke Day!!

Thursday is Joke Day has been going strong for over a year now. I started this on Sept. 9, 2021. Every Thursday I post a joke for my two neighborhood kids on our mailboxes next to their bus stop. It’s taken on a life of its own, this goofy weekly joke, and it occurred to me recently how integral the tiniest bits of life can become.

When Covid hit, I put together a driveway art class, which I’ve written about before. The ‘class’ ran during the warm-enough months outside in my driveway and my cousin’s, during the period when vaccines weren’t yet available, and the world lay in an isolated heap. That class kept my heart alive and connected me to four beautiful young souls each week.

Then when Covid got under control, and school thankfully got back underway, the sadness of the disappearance of the art class stuck around in me. I still wanted to connect with my young pals. Thus, ‘Thursday is Joke Day’ was invented.

It was a small gesture compared to the art class, but it was still a fun thing to do for my little friends, and it brought joy to me. Make joy for others = reap joy for yourself. A super simple age-old hardwired equation.

The original idea for Thursday is Joke Day was a chalk joke written on our shared driveway, such that it’d face the bus and all the kids could read it. I still love that idea, but since I didn’t have any background in driveway chalk jokes, I didn’t anticipate what a lack of rain would mean for my ability to erase one pun in time for the next one.

All photos by author

So, Thursday jokes switched over to paper.

When I first started out as a weekly jokester, I had no experience. I still have no experience as a joke maker, because I steal every bloody joke off the internet. Which is fine. The plan wasn’t that I’d become Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin anytime soon. The plan was that I’d initiate smiles on Thursday mornings — which I successfully have done.

My early attempts were cut and dry. And when I say dry, I mean they were au naturel.

Then I quickly realized rain makes paper jokes lamentable — and delaminated. There is a learning curve to everything.

Speaking of learning curves, eventually I learned, and things started to click. As the weeks went by, the kids and I developed a joke day system. Since sustainability is important to a viable Joke Day, there mustn’t be a weekly re-issue of Ziploc gallon-size plastic bags. Ideally, there would be one dedicated bag, which early on wasn’t happening. Since I told the kids they could take the jokes, the joke would disappear at the end of the day along with the bag.

We fixed this minor problem and soon the jokes on Thursday were smooth sailing.

Joke Day only has small problems. You shouldn’t have to work so hard for humor — unless you’re a highly paid comedian who the world depends on to be funny. And thanks to them, I have free jokes for Joke Day.

Slowly Thursday jokes took on the additional feature of illustration. This was an influence coming from my digital cartoons which I was making every week. Joke + image = potential laugh. This was how I saw it. So, I began to add that task to my Wednesday evening to-do list.

Speaking of Wednesday evening, that’s part of the Joke Day story, too. I can’t say every Wednesday evening I remember it’s Wednesday. When this happens, suddenly I’m cursing myself at 11 pm. “Oh no! I forgot Joke Day! Arrgh!” So, it goes.

I scramble online to find a joke, write it out legibly, and carefully draw a small relevant image — in magic marker with no room for mistakes. Then I scurry down in the dark to the mailboxes in my pajamas, bedroom slippers, and with my night mouthguard securely in place. At last, I will set up the joke for the morning.

I much prefer doing it this way than waking early to do it. Easier to extend getting into bed than having to get out of it too early.

Like any good joke-stealing jokester, I want to get more bang for my buck. Since its inception, I’ve shared Thursday is Joke Day with grown adults on my Facebook page. Why should cheesy kid jokes be wasted on kids? Why should anything be wasted on kids?? Mature, and extra-mature, adults deserve to laugh, too — and they seem to. Each week there are always folks who feel compelled to answer my posts with bad puns of their own. We’re all just fishing for laughs, I think.

Maybe you can see how this small weekly act could bring a not-so-small rate of return. The effort is sometimes a hassle, but once I follow through, I never regret it. It’s fun to search for the jokes. It’s fun to sketch them out. It’s fun to sneak down to the mailboxes in the dark, the sneaky joke-thieving laugh-meister that I am. Then to know I brought even a few smiles to other’s faces — that’s a beautiful thing. Even if the jokes are only a bit funny, they still work because the whole idea is silly and sweet.

Would I choose to do all this again if I had the choice? Toad-ally.

Be well, friends.