She lays the poodle on the table. Bartender says, “I suppose you won’t be needing a drink.” Naked lady says…
The joke is actually a line out of the Breakfast Club, voiced by the character John Bender as he is crawling through an air vent. he is interrupted when he falls through the vent and into the corridor below. John is actually in detention with a group of his peers, and before this scene he has been removed to a room of his own (which opens from the outside) – hence his escape routine.
It’s said that the joke was an ad-lib by Jud Nelson, and that there isn’t a punch-line. His actual line, when he re-joined his class-mates, surprising them with his presence, is – “I forgot my pencil.”
I can accept the creativity, and even admire his thought process – it was very entertaining. I just can’t get the joke out of my head.
The Breakfast Club, as some of you know, is one of my favourite films. I first started watching it in the early 90s and I can quote pretty much the entire movie.
Perhaps if I hadn’t seen it so many times, or if it hadn’t been a big part of my teenage years, I would have forgotten about the joke – moved on so to speak. Maybe not.
The thing is…I need closure. I know, it’s such a trivial thing to need satisfying, but it grates at me when things are left incomplete. Some of the stories I’ve written over the years are in a folder that will never see the light of day because they’re, quite frankly, terrible. Yet I took the time and effort to give them a solid ending.
I’m not criticising Jud Nelson. He was, creatively speaking, adding humour to a tense situation. The joke served a purpose, and the punch line wasn’t the point of that particular scene. If I have a problem with the fact it’s incomplete, it’s exactly that – my problem. I can’t deny it turned out to be an unpredicted bonus in terms of publicity. It certainly got people talking.
In 365 Days of Writing Prompts, brought to us by the editors at WordPress – the prompt for today is – Choose your own adventure. The prompt being to write a story or post and get the readers to decide the ending.
So here is my post, and my challenge to you. Give me a punch-line for the joke. I’ll display my favourite in celebration of the fact I have a little closure at last!
Thanks for reading.
Mel
Melissa Barker-Simpson 
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