slow on the uptake

[ewein2412]

My kids have grown up with the story of this exchange I overheard between two old geezers on a bus in Perth, sometime in the past ten years, but so long ago we can't remember when it happened:

Geezer 1: "Upon a hill I saw a coo.
It's not there noo.
It must have shifted.

"That's poeyetry, that is."

Geezer 2: "What planet are ye on?"


This story has been around so long that both my kids recite it as examples of 1) funny old guys on buses, 2) amateur poeyetry, 3) randomness. (Often, the "What planet are ye on" response gets quoted out of context.)

Well, last week we were discussing this ditty at length for no real reason, and pretty randomly, Mark counted up the syllables and discovered that it is in fact 17 syllables long, and therefore technically a haiku, especially if you write it like this:


Upon a hill I
saw a coo. It's not there noo.
It must have shifted.

So actually (and we cracked up at length over this) it *IS* poeyetry.

Yesterday, Sara commented, "That coo on the hill haiku is about a HIGH. COO."

And suddenly the whole thing clicked - and we realized that in fact the geezer on the bus had been trying to tell a JOKE, not a poem, and he GOT THE PUNCHLINE WRONG ten years ago or whatever it was.

So the joke goes like this! (And you have to be very, very deadpan in the way you tell it.)

Upon a hill I
saw a coo. It's not there noo.
It must have shifted.

That's a HAI-KU.

[thunderous applause]

I think we have set a record for the Longest Time it Takes to Get a Joke.

Also, it doesn't really work in English.

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Oh....so very very bad....