Anatomy of a Dirty Joke

Question - What did one potato chip say to the other potato chip?
Answer - "Free to lay?"

Free to lay. ... "Frito-Lay!" Get it? The potato-chip company?

Anyway, that's the only potato-chip joke I know. Some people don't even know that many. I still remember the afternoon in Grade 9 math class when Alan Tidey told it to our group and did it with that dry deadpan delivery of his. The man could have been on the Carson show.

And its stuck with me all these years. I like to save it for special occassions. Life doesn't offer too many opportunities to slip a good potato-chip joke into the conversation, so it's fresh every time.

It's one of those jokes that can be appreciated on a number of levels. For the intelligensia, it's a good example of a 'pun' - a clever play-on-words. For the rest of us, its a cute little sex joke. So harmless it could be on a greeting-card. So inoffensive it can even be told in mixed company.

Then there's the appeal it has for those with the potato-chip fetish. I don't really know what goes through the minds of such people. Oh, sure I can imagine how it might be kind of fun to roll around naked on a bed full of potato chips and then lick the crumbled pieces off each others' bodies. Maybe even introduce a French-Onion dip into the proceedings. But as to whether or not they have a sense of humour and would enjoy a good potato-chip joke, well who knows?