PLAYING FOOTSIES

Andy Martin's posts

- I just bought my boyfriend a prosthetic leg for Christmas. - Is that his main present? - No, just a stocking stuffer What so funny about this? This joke definitely falls into the category of “sick jokes”. It’s not cool to make fun of people’s disabilities. Yet handicapped people will tell some of the funniest jokes about handicaps. That’s because you have to be able to laugh at yourself. Sometimes it’s the only way to deal with the pain. So, I know I’m not being exactly politically correct here, and if anyone is offended, please stop listening or reading. To add insult to injury, as the saying goes, this joke could even be considered sexist. As I originally heard it, the prosthetic leg was for a girlfriend, not a boyfriend, so I changed the sexes. Now that the military is accepting woman into combat, sadly either one could sustain such an injury. Of course war is not the only way people lose legs. There can be accidents in moving vehicles or sometimes people lose limbs from diabetes. Occasionally even babies are born missing legs. Clearly this is not a funny subject, yet here we are. Let’s plow ahead. A prosthetic leg is a fake, or substitute leg, that people who have missing legs, will sometimes wear. In the old days you had pirates using wooden stumps or “peg legs”; later on, legs were carved from wood and then, later still, plastics and other more realistic looking and feeling materials. These days, prostheses have become so advanced that some people can even race on them. In the joke we hear that someone bought their boyfriend a prosthetic leg as a Christmas present. Of course, it’s very common for people to by multiple presents, including big expensive ones and smaller, inexpensive novelties which are put into stockings hung from the fireplace or some other location if there is no fireplace. The old custom was that children would hang their stockings from the fireplace and Santa Claus was supposed to come down the chimney and either put presents in the stockings if they were well behaved children, or lumps of coal, if they had misbehaved a lot during the year. But in this case the prosthetic leg I’m sure fit snugly into the stocking. And THAT’s what’s so funny! Thanks to @bestjokeseverUK on Twitter for this one #joke #pun #ESL #ELT #ELL #ELD #ESOL #EFL #TESOL #ESOL #English #language #learnenglish #twinglish #wordplay #prosthesis #stockingstuffer