An Aha moment

As you've noticed I'm rather fond of silly gags and jokes. I've been repeating them for almost as long as I can remember (I must have been an annoying kid). For instance, one cold winters morning in 1967 Misery Guts (my stepfather) discovered, in a hurry on his way to work, that he had a flat tyre. I, of course, pointed out that it was only flat on the bottom!

Andrew's rather fond of pretending that he's confused. Maybe it's not pretence; only time will tell. He's been pulling the 'I'm a naive kid, I'm confused' act for a couple of years now. I suspect it's a blind; if he can convince all those around him that it's true he hopes it'll buy some slack. Which may work, for a while. But that's hardly the way to approach his not so distant adulthood. Thus, as the caring stepfather, it behooves me to snap him out of it. My first approach was to try ridicule. I remember as a kid that the one thing I hated above all others was ridicule.

So out I came with the old gag; 'How do you confuse Andrew? Stick him in a 44 gallon drum and tell him to piss in the corner!'. Blank looks. Okay, that didn't work. Let's think of something else.

Today at the office in conversation over a smoke out the back of the building someone mentioned a 55 gallon drum and suddenly the penny dropped. What I'm used to thinking of as a 44 gallon drum is a 55 gallon drum here. The same size drum because the size of the gallon[^] is different. So maybe that's why Andrew didn't understand the joke!

Over dinner the perfect opportunity arose to repeat the gag; 'How do you confuse Andrew? Stick him in a 55 gallon drum and tell him to piss in the corner!'.

Blank look!