The Bad Joke
I was a young man in my early 20’s who was trying to figure out life. I was a typical high school underachiever who liked to party but never showed interest in anything adult-like. College had been uninteresting to me so as a result, I washed out early. With no direction in life, I decided to take a job as a phlebotomist (a person who draws blood for lab work) in a hospital to explore a possible interest in medicine.
I had always thought of myself as caring, a person with compassion, so maybe providing healthcare to the injured or sick might inspire me into a career.
I knew the phlebotomist gig wasn’t working from the start. First, I had to wake up at 4:30AM to get to work which didn’t fit my social life. Secondly, I had never performed well under pressure. And the pressure of having those I was sticking with a sharp metal instrument watching me work while feeling the pain that I created was too much for me to handle.
On one of my last days as an unsuccessful phlebotomist trainee, I was in a patient’s room accompanying my trainer who was, as usual, doing all the work. The patient was an older African American woman lying in bed with her white hospital-issued sheet and blanket pulled all the way to her chin. Her family was standing in a semi-circle around the room.
As my trainer was preparing to draw blood, I, using my bedside mannerism that I was actually to this point feeling quite confident in, asked her, “ma’am, how are you doing today?”
“I’m okay, but quite sick,” she replied.
Seeing an opportunity to showcase my skills for the trainer, I asked, “Can I tell you a joke to cheer you up?”
She replied slowly, “sure,” much as you’d expect from an older person in the hospital.
I started the joke with, ”What do you call a cow with no legs?”
She quietly replied, “Oh, I don’t know.”
The punchline was right on time, “ground beef!”
The entire family and the sick woman chuckled, my phlebotomist trainer smiled without looking up, all responses sending waves of pride down my body.
As the sound of chuckles quickly subsided, the sick older woman said, “that is like me, you see, I just had my leg amputated.”
Today, I am in my late 50’s living a mostly unsuccessful career as an unknown amateur humorist.
