Show High Time Can't Beat High Jokes By FLORENCE BITTNER A group of people I have long held in great admiration if not down right awe is junior high school I love my own adolescents but there are times when even a doting mother must admit they are about like living in a school for apprentice THIS FALL B. and I a group of thirteen and fourteen year old boys on an They were beautifully a credit to their but their jokes left me limp-from They amused each other with such gems the best way to prevent infection caused by biting Don't bite goes A bee flying do you make a Push SUBDUED giggles from the back seat as they continued to match it harmful to write on an empty but paper is an astronaut One with in Groans greeted most of indicated the joke was as old as the in my boy's a A bug that can't was the first doughnut In are fish dealers so Because their business makes them NOT ONE of the boys in the back seat dignified these exchanges with a but Mama was having a ball in the front Even B. occasionally gave a great you hear about the man with the gleam in his Some one bumped his elbow when he was brushing his I liked that but B.'s favorite was the tale told in great seriousness concerning the difficulty the grandfather of one of the boys had telling two of his horses SO HE cut off the tail of one but It grew so he cut the mane of the other but that grew Finally he hit on a bright idea of measuring and this idea worked because he found sure the white horse was two inches taller than the black For some reason young boys seem to find the macabre For there is the story told by my own cherub about the cannibal while touring an old English saw a knight in armor and remarked that the local canned goods looked HE FOLLOWED with the story of the mother tiger who scolded her cub for chasing the man around a She'd told him a hundred times not to play with his Another boy came up with the story I'd said that to the they'd have wondered if it was about the injured pedestrian asked by a cop if he got the license number of the car that hit He said he didn't but he'd remember that laugh I WASN'T sure I liked the story about the lifeguard who asked this Scout how much weight he could carry and the Scout said about a hundred would you do if you had to rescue a two-hundred pound two said the nonplussed Often the sillier a joke the funnier the kids find are you to those holes in your with the kids across the Even sillier was did the grape say when the elephant stepped on It just gave a little I TRIED a few of my own but they went over steel your It will put color in your In unison the back seat wants green Oh As I I admire junior high school teachers Imagine having to listen to that for nine months of the But one thing about the jokes of they can be told in public without |