Sometimes technology makes things more complicated than they should be, and telephones particularly make it easier to “reach out and touch someone,” as the old commercial goes. But one thing you can count on is that kids are good at following instructions, but sometimes they take directions literally. In other words, be careful what you ask for. In the joke below, a dad thinks he’s calling home and is shocked to find out that his wife can’t come to the phone because she’s in the bedroom with another man. Giving his little girl careful instructions, the dad waits on the phone for her to come back. What he discovers next is that things went very, very wrong. Enjoy this macabre but kinda funny joke.
“Hello?” “Hi, honey. This is Daddy. Is Mommy near the phone?”
“No, Daddy. She’s upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Paul.”
After a brief pause, Daddy says, “But honey, you haven’t got an Uncle Paul.”
“Oh yes, I do, and he’s upstairs in the room with Mommy, right now.”
Brief Pause. “Uh, okay then, this is what I want you to do. Put the phone down on the table, run upstairs and knock on the bedroom door and shout to Mommy that Daddy’s car just pulled into the driveway.”
“Okay, Daddy, just a minute.” A few minutes later, the little girl comes back to the phone. “I did it, Daddy.”
“And what happened, honey?” he asked.
“Well, Mommy got all scared, jumped out of bed with no clothes on, and ran around screaming. Then she tripped over the rug, hit her head on the dresser, and now she isn’t moving at all!”
“Oh, my God!!! What about your Uncle Paul?”
“He jumped out of bed with no clothes on, too. He was all scared, and he jumped out of the back window and into the swimming pool. But I guess he didn’t know that you took out the water last week to clean it. He hit the bottom of the pool, and I think he’s dead.”
***Long Pause***
Then Daddy says, “Swimming pool? …. Is this 486-5731?”
