joke

[keitra]

I don't understand the following joke.

An elephant walking along the jungle path meets a mouse coming in the opposite direction.They stop and look at each other with interest.The elephant finally breaks the silence and says, "Why are you so small?" And the mouse looks up and says,,"I've not been well."

[Quizmonster]

The joke, surely, is in the almost surrealist difference in the way each is considering the situation. The elephant is really asking 'Why are you so small compared with me?' whilst the mouse is considering his size compared to the way it was before he became unwell and started to lose weight.

[scaniavabis]

I disagree, I think it's a reference to "he's not been well" attributed I think to Hilda Baker when describing her husband in a nightshirt up a ladder to the person holding the ladder looking up.

[Quizmonster]

Well, I don't dispute the similarity between the mouse's and Hilda Baker's comments, but surely it can't be necessary to find something funny today that one be aware of some throwaway line in a British TV programme from about 30-odd years ago!
I found it amusing just as it is, myself.
The surrealistic element is similar to the sort of thing one finds in Eddie Izzard's comedy all the time. For example, he describes how his cats often disappear behind the settee and purr. It would probably never have occurred to most of us but what he thought was, "I wonder what they're drilling for?" Only when we hear that does it occur to us that cats' purring DOES sound like a distant pneumatic drill.
Same with the mouse and the elephant. Of course the elephant would see the mouse as small at any time, but the mouse sees himself as small only now that he's not very well. Before that, he was quite big in his own eyes.

[Quizmonster]

Sorry about the excessive bold print. Only the word 'he' was meant to be so treated.

[sophie_1003]

I think it's just nonsense, it made me laugh anyway!

[Clanad]

A few years ago when I first became acquainted with the vagaries of not only the concept of the British appreciation for ironic humor and the aphorisms of this site, Q and me had an officinal exchange of views containing a simulacrum of subreption, the subject of which centered on the aforementioned raillery... For my part, I gained a respect for Q as a philologist of the British persuasion.
I recall that during our exchange Q bemoaned the loss of a native appreciation for the form of humor defining all that's English.
I perceive we have an example of that inanition in this fine example of the ironic ... unfortunately appreciated only by the apodictically inclined Q (and me)...

[BillySugger]

Made me giggle

[crisgal]

i appreciated it too!
though i'm not as clever with me words but!

[Quizmonster]

I'm delighted that the majority of us simply found it funny...especially so given that our American cousin, C, shared that view. He'll never have heard of Hilda Baker, I'll be bound!
Happy New Year to all of you.

[fredpuli47]

It's Hylda Baker , not Hilda Baker. Honestly! (She knows ,y'know !) :-)

[Quizmonster]

She apparently doesn't - or didn't - know how to spell, Fred! The name comes from an abbreviated Germanic source meaning battle, spelt 'hild'. Perhaps she was one of the earliest name-tamperers, such as give us nowadays monikers like Jakki, Danii and so forth.

[tezmand]

is it not something to do with the fact that an elephant and a mouse can talk lol

[weecalf]

I think the mouse thinks the elephant thinks the mouse is an elephant and just to humour him he says he has not beeen well ...