The joke:
Today in the U.S., it’s National Teacher Appreciation Day. I know, that’s a long word. Just sound it out. Uh…pree…shee…AY…shun. Can anybody tell me what that means? Anybody?
How I wrote it:
I picked this news item because the topic handle “teacher” seemed to have associations that I could use to create a punch line. Plus the item doesn’t relate to any of the tricky political issues that dominate the news these days.
I used my Punch Line Maker #1, but not in the usual way. The usual way would have been to link an association of “teacher” to an association of another topic handle, “appreciation.” That would have resulted in a punch line that, for example, stated in a surprising way how a teacher might show or be shown appreciation.
Instead, I associated “appreciation” with its characteristic of being a relatively long word.
And to create a punch line, I linked that characteristic to an association of “teacher,” namely the way a teacher might help a young student to read a long word out loud.
My Joke Maximizer # 4 is “Make everything clear.” To clarify the connection between the punch line and “teacher,” I added an ending where the joke writer talks to his readers as if they are students in a classroom.
The word “Anybody?” at the very end adds a final surprise, and bit of humor, because it implies that the readers didn’t understand the joke they just read.
Of course, because this joke is based on how a word appears in print, it wouldn’t work if delivered orally.