August 10, 2026
About 50 years ago, I witnessed what I still consider the perfect joke.
I was in elementary school. I was hanging out with two of the more mischievous kids at school. Shane, who was in my class, and Richard, who was a few grades ahead of us. I wouldn’t say Richard and I were friends. It was more that he acknowledged me and allowed me to follow him around. Neither Shane nor Richard were particularly popular.
Then again, neither was I.
It was recess and instead of playing kickball or hanging from the monkey bars, we’d found some track equipment that hadn’t been put away after a weekend track meet. There were two thick pads stacked on top of each other. They were the big pads used to catch athletes coming down from the high jump. They were old and beat up and probably didn’t have too many years left in them. But schools aren’t exactly flush with cash, so I’m sure those things still had another decade and several rolls of duct tape ahead of them.
The way the two pads were sitting on top of each other created a weird opening between them. Richard looked at it and said it looked like a sideways vagina. I didn’t really have a point of reference at that age, so I took his word for it. Richard crawled between the pads from the back, pushed his way out the front and pretended he’d just been born.
The pads had given birth to him. Shane and I thought this was incredible. So naturally, we joined in.
One by one, we’d crawl into the back, push our way through the opening and emerge as newborn babies. I think we each got two or three turns before a teacher spotted us. He came over pissed. He told us we were ruining the equipment and yelled, “Don’t you know better than this?”
Without missing a beat, Richard looked at him and said:
“What do you think? I was born yesterday?”
The teacher just stood there. He knew he’d been verbally bested by a sixth grader. He told us to leave the equipment alone and walked away.
I didn’t laugh.
I wanted to. But I was too blown away by what I’d just witnessed. It was perfect. The setup. The timing. The fact that we’d literally just been pretending to be born. Then a teacher unknowingly walked in and handed Richard the exact line he needed.
Did Richard come up with that on the spot?
Had he thought of it days earlier? Years earlier? Was he just walking through life waiting for someone to finally ask him if he knew better? He was what, 11 or 12? What kid has those kinds of comedy chops?
Richard and I never became close friends. Our friendship was always more geographical than bonded. But I kept an eye on him. I admired him. I waited for the next great riff. Richard was funny and remained funny. But he never again knocked my Superman socks off like he did that day.
Time went on.
I did stand-up for a while. I wrote satire. I wrote comedy shorts. I wrote feature films. People have told me I’m funny. I’ve even won awards for it. I’ve had some great zingers over the years. I’ve made people choke on drinks. I’ve had people bring up something I said years earlier because, for whatever reason, it stayed in their heads. But in my mind, I never quite hit Richard’s level that day.
That stupid joke has haunted me for almost 50 years.
Until this past weekend.
Some good friends of mine recently purchased a large production studio here in Tulsa. They’ve been working hard getting it up and running, and they’ve done a great job. It’s going to be a huge asset to film production in the area. The building itself is nearly 80 years old and surrounded by other old warehouses. Some are unused. Some could use a little attention. The property next door had recently been cleared of brush, revealing three abandoned cars.
I’m a curious guy. I wanted to see the cars.
I asked my friend how to get over there. He walked me to a piece of plywood leaning against the fence. He pulled it away and revealed a diamond-shaped hole someone had cut into the chain-link. He told me I could crawl through there. So I got down on my knees and started squeezing through.
My friend looked at me and said, “It’s kind of like coming out of the womb.”
Then he added, “Go slow so you don’t get caught on the metal.”
Without thinking, I said:
“What do you think? I was born yesterday?”
He choked.
He wasn’t ready for it.
I know that feeling.
I’ve been there.
I looked back and he was still laughing. He and I are normally pretty funny together. Whether it’s stupid texts or trying to outdo each other in person, we have a pretty good back and forth. But this time I had him.
There was no response. He just turned around and walked away. And I stood there feeling incredibly proud of myself. Nearly 50 years later, I finally got to use the perfect joke.
A joke written by a little kid on a playground sometime in the early ’80s had been sitting in my brain all this time, waiting for another womb-related situation to present itself.
And when it did, I was ready.
Do I feel guilty for stealing a joke?
Sure.
A little.
Did I admit it to my friend?
Hell no.
The next day I told the whole story to my wife. She laughed and agreed that it was a pretty perfect joke.
It’s been a few days now.
I’d say I’m sitting at about 5% guilt and 95% satisfaction.
And to Richard, who probably forgot about that joke five seconds after he said it:
Thanks.
I finally got my turn and I stuck the landing. (Yes, I know that’s not really a high-jump reference)
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