The Atlantic

Knock Knock. Who’s There? Kids. Kids Who? Kids Tell Terrible Jokes.

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When I was 4, my favorite joke to tell my family members went like this:

“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Guitar.”
“Guitar who?”
“Guitar if you don’t have a house!”

Every time I delivered the punch line, I would look expectantly at my audience, who would, after a moment, either politely chuckle or just squint in bewilderment. Literally nothing is funny or clever about . Not only is it not a sentence, but there is no pun or wordplay to catch onto, no meta-textual wink to make it a joke about jokes. It’s just a bunch of words that are familiar to small children,

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