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Knock knock ...

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, August 31, 2009

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You’ll undoubtedly notice that this week’s column is about something other than Ian, the 2-year-old grandboy. Evidently you cannot milk a toddler for column fodder indefinitely – he hasn’t done anything clever or thought-provoking all week. I think he might be busted.

Anyway, he left you readers at the mercy of my wondering, wandering mind.

I wonder some of the strangest things sometimes when my mind is wandering: The other day I wondered who told the very first ever knock-knock joke. How did they get the other person to play? Didn’t the time required to explain the listener’s role in the joke take away from the punch line?

I happen to have a favorite knock-knock joke, which is the best knock-knockl joke I’ve ever heard. If I ever figure out how to put a knock-knock joke into print so that it’s still funny, I’ll tell it to you.

Shortly after I began wondering about the first ever knock-knock joke, I happened to come up with a fairly decent “Tom Swifty”:

“My ‘Royal Sunset’ has got thrips,” she said morosely.

If you don’t get it, you might not be familiar with Tom Swift; or you might not be familiar with the type of pun known as a “Tom Swifty”; or, it might just be a poor attempt on my part -- but I’m glossing right over that last possibility and launching into a treatise on Tom Swift and the “Tom Swifty” as if you had begged me to, because that’s what columnists do.

Describing what a “Tom Swifty” is, is kind of like having to explain how a knock-knock joke works in order to inflict one on somebody – so I’ll start with the character, Tom Swift.

I don’t remember how many Tom Swift books I read as a child, or their names. I do remember the last one I ever read – it was “Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X.” That book, I learned from Wikipedia, was published in 1961, when I’d have been seven, but I imagine I read it in the mid-sixties sometime – by the late sixties and early teens, I had outgrown Tom Swift.

Like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift books were written by a number of people, all using the pen name Victor Appleton. The books began in 1910 and, according to Wikipedia, the last one was published in 2007, which startled me. I haven’t seen a Tom Swift book for easily 40 years.

Tom Swift books were aimed at about the same age of reader as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The main character is a genius, an inventor, and an adventurer – He was always inventing some impossible-sounding gizmo, then having to fight to keep it from falling into the hands of the bad guys.

But here’s the coolest thing about Tom Swift books: A lot of his fictional inventions got invented in real life. The example I knew of is the taser – you know how LASER stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation? Have you ever heard people trying to figure out what TASER stands for?

The original name was TSER – for Tom Swift Electric Rifle. “Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle” was published in 1911.

The Wikipedia article I read has numerous other instances of real inventions based on Tom’s fictional inventions. I had no idea there were so many.

The other cool thing that sprang from Tom Swift books was the “Tom Swifty.” The prime example, of course, is, "We must hurry," said Tom Swiftly. Here are some other examples:

"I lost my crutches," said Tom lamely.
"I'll take the prisoner downstairs," said Tom condescendingly.
"Pass me the shellfish," said Tom crabbily.
"That's the last time I'll stick my hand in a lion's mouth," the lion-tamer said off-handedly.
"Can I go looking for the Grail again?" Tom requested.
"I unclogged the drain with a vacuum cleaner," Tom said succinctly.
"I might as well be dead," Tom croaked.
"They had to amputate them both at the ankles," Tom said defeatedly.
"Who discovered radium?" asked Marie curiously.
"Hurry up and get to the back of the ship," Tom said sternly.

I admired these greatly when I was young. They were like inside jokes between me and the author. The fact that not everybody who read the books got the “Tom Swifties” made me feel even more special.

I find that I still admire them – just thinking up the rose pun taxed my brain. If I tried really hard for a few more days I might come up with some more – but a whole book full of them? That’s championship punning, people.

Before Tom Swifties, of course, there were Wellerisms, named for the Sam Weller character in Charles Dickens’ “The Pickwick Papers”:

"Out with it, as the father said to the child when he swallowed a farden [farthing]."
"I see," said the blind man.
"It all comes back to me now," said the Captain as he spat into the wind.

Other antiquarian forms of punning, like malapropisms (“It’s not the heat, it’s the humility”) and spoonerisms (“Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?”) have roots and histories – even new forms, like eggcorns (“old-timers’ disease”) have histories. They're all probably worth exploring.

The trouble is, the more you think (or write) about humor, the less you tend to laugh at it …

Knock knock.

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