Once upon a time, in 2003, an Ocellaris clownfish named Marlin, in a movie called Finding Nemo, tried to tell a joke.
“All right, I know one joke. Um, there’s a mollusk, see? And he walks up to a sea, well he doesn’t walk up, he swims up. Well, actually the mollusk isn’t moving. He's in one place and then the sea cucumber, well they—I mixed up. There was a mollusk and a sea cucumber. None of them were walking, so forget that I…”
How. Embarrassing.
Watching Marlin clumsily wade towards some sort of resolution, the audience can’t help but root for someone to change the subject. And, thankfully, someone does.
Just like clownfish, humans often avoid telling jokes because they can’t remember the ending. Wouldn’t life be so much funnier if they could?
Joke telling 101
A successful joke contains two critical parts: the setup and the punchline.
Part One: The Setup
Before something can be funny, the scene must be set. The teller depicts an everyday, relatable situation, which acts as a short introduction about the topic.
Part Two: The Punchline AKA The Unexpected Twist
This is the critical mass—it’s the homerun of baseball, the icing on the cake, the ne plus ultra of all your hard work.
Part two makes zero sense without the setup, but with no twist, you’re really just telling an awkward story. And, like in Marlin’s story, the audience will be praying for it to end.
“There was this mollusk and he walks up to a sea cucumber. Normally, they don’t talk, sea cucumbers, but in a joke, everyone talks. So the sea mollusk says to the cucumber…”
The key to remembering jokes is by working backwards. If you know the ending, the rest of the story will come back to you. If you only concentrate on small details you’ll find yourself pulling a Marlin.
When Marlin’s effort to relay the joke finally culminates the audience is filled with relief.
As he delivers the final line, it releases the tension, which built throughout the film. At this point, it’s irrelevant whether the punchline is even funny—the real secret of telling a joke.
“So just then, the sea cucumber looks over to the mollusk and says: ‘With fronds like these, who needs anemones!’”
Whew.
Joking aside, is memorization of any real significance in our busy, web-based, there’s-an-app-for-that society?
September's Insights Magazine and the LifeTrac blog grapple with this subject.
What about God’s Word? Does memorizing Scripture make the to-do list?
By Robyn Roste
Read bio and see more from this author
