I remember those school days, laughing at the stupidest jokes with my friends. I recently asked them about the jokes we used to love but can’t even stand now. The responses floored me.
Here are 12 jokes kids think are funny, and adults just cringe at.
Gross-out food combinations
Pairing ice cream with ketchup, chocolate with pickles or other strange mixtures had the power to elicit giggles from children. “We dared each other to eat the grossest thing we could think of,” a friend recounted.
As a child, it was all so funny. These days, we are far too grown-up to laugh at such concoctions. We care about what food really tastes like. We care about whether the things we eat are even edible. In all honesty, most of it just seems nasty.
Slapstick injuries
It used to be so funny watching people slip on banana peels or trip over chairs. The louder they fell the better. Now, though, that seems more cringe-inducing.
We’re at the age where we cross our fingers they didn’t really hurt themselves. Pain, apparently, isn’t as amusing once you’ve been in some.
Animal impressions
Do you still do impressions of barking dogs and meowing cats? Back in the day, everyone thought that was the funniest thing in the world. It really seemed like it back then.
“It was cute when we were kids,” my friend Lena told me, “but now it’s just weird.” Unless you’re goofing off with toddlers, animal impressions only earn you polite smiles.
Old and tired riddles
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” was once a crowd pleaser.
It’s easy to remember, easy to tell, and always made us laugh. But you’ve heard them all a hundred times. The punch line just isn’t funny anymore. “At this point,” a friend told me, “the chicken should just stay on its side.”
Cartoon catchphrases
Shouting “D’oh!” or “SpongeBob says…” used to be hilarious. We parroted lines from our favorite shows everyday, because it made us feel cool being like them. But now it just sounds lame.
Funny noises and sound effects
Laughing, we all recalled how some of us made robot voices, fart noises, or random beeps that got everyone laughing. As one of my friends put it: “It’s funny how the same beep that used to make us laugh as kids now just makes us roll our eyes.”
Silly dares
“Bet you won’t lick that pole” or “Eat that grass” were once considered hilarious challenges among friends. We giggled at the silliness and courage of the person who did it. Now we just see how grossly unsafe it all was.
Literal jokes
Kids do these all the time. Tell them something like “break a leg” and someone would hobble across the room. It was always a good laugh for the crowd. As adults, that sort of humor seems so immature.
Copying teachers or parents
Mimicking a teacher’s voice or mocking a parent’s phrasing would always get a laugh in school. We were acting like we were above them after all.
But now it seems petty, we know they were just doing their job, trying to educate and care for us the best way they knew how.
Funny mispronunciations
Children think it’s fun to slightly twist words to make them sound funny; calling spaghetti, “pasketti” or dinosaur, “diney-sore.” It’s cute when they’re six, mildly amusing at ten, but by the time we’re adults it’s just embarrassing.
Homework/detention jokes
We used to make fun of any bit of homework or detention like it was the end of the world. We used those jokes to feel better about the stress of school. These days, we’ve got bigger problems. And one friend said, “Boy, I wish it was just homework we had to worry about.”
Fake accents
A friend reminisced, “Remember how we thought we were so funny when we said ‘Ello, gov’nor!’?” Acting a stupid British or robot accent was hilarious. But when we get older it just doesn’t feel right anymore. What was once funny now just feels cringey.
