Sequencing Your Talk or

When Should You Say What?

by Lynn Grasberg
 

I'm committed to promoting humor that doesn't require jokes or remembering punchlines but I'm going to break my usual policy and actually use a joke to look at the importance of sequencing - the order in which you say (or write) things - and why it makes a difference.

A man goes into a restaurant and asks the waiter for some eggs and some kind words. The waiter brings the order. "Thanks," says the man. "Now, could I have some kind words?" "Sure," says the waiter. "Don't eat them eggs."

Okay. It's an old, old joke. I first heard it from my grandfather. (And he probably got it from Bennett Cerf or the Readers Digest.) I told it the other day to a fairly sophisticated friend who did not have the same grandfather and she actually laughed. How come? Maybe it was my delivery. But the laugh was embedded in the structure of the story: The man asks for food and support, in the wrong order, and the waiter gives him exactly what he asked for.

If the waiter told him to refrain from eating the eggs at the beginning, no sale. And no joke. (But maybe a new career for the waiter as a "food coach".)

The standard format for the short stories we call "jokes" is set-up, build-up and pay-off. And somewhere in there, there has to be a twist on our expectations, a surprise. If you give the surprise away too soon, you undermine the whole thing.

My grandmother, a classic joke wrecker, would probably do it like this. "Hey, Allie," she would say. This would already be driving my father up the wall since as "Alexander" he had been trying to avoid his baby nickname his whole life. "Tell the one about the waiter who says, Don't eat them eggs."

Boom. Dead joke.