Reader WPD has it right. When Alexander Woolcott greeted Dorothy Parker with the curt, “My dear Miss Parker, you look almost like a man!” her answer was: “So do you!” It knocked him for a loop because his masculinity was somewhat in doubt! He hugged her and on the spot invited me to be a Algonquin Roundtable member. Congratulations, WPD!
Now another. No one will get this because it’s fairly obscure. And it’s mildly scatological, for which pardon. Dr. Russell Kirk, the famous father of modern conservative thought, was a visiting fellow at Princeton for a year. Dr. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Harvard-trained ultra-liberal prize-winning biographer of Andrew Jackson, FDR and JFK happened to be doing a lecture there at the same time. During a break, both ended up in the Men’s Room, standing side by side where they disputed conservatism vs. liberalism rather vigorously. When Schlesinger finished, he went to the sink and scrubbed his hands vigorously. Kirk completed his work and sailed out the door. Schlesinger caught up with him and said, loud enough for many to hear:
“At Harvard we were taught to wash our hands after we pee!”
Kirk stopped and in a voice equally loud responded:
What?
"At Princeton they teach us not to pee on our hands."
ReplyDeleteI would guess, "At Princeton they teach us not to piss on our hands."
ReplyDelete(There was a soldier/sailor joke to that effect many years ago. Probably WWII).
This is an old joke. I even heard a variation of it from a Russian. "Where I went to school, theyu taught us not to piss on our hands.
ReplyDeleteTom, you're not *that* old, are you? :-)
ReplyDelete