Greg’s crackpot theories, #1: the Opportunistic Joke Theory
January 3, 2012The Opportunistic Joke Theory (OJT) states that the best, funniest jokes are mind-boggingly specific to the context in which they were made. They are jokes about which people remark “you had to be there”; if you weren’t, your chance to hear that particular joke may never come again.
My all-time favorite exemplar of the OJT involves a type of elective surgery best left undiscussed here. Over Christmas break, though, my uncle Scott provided another one that will suffice for illustrative purposes. We were driving in southern South Carolina near Parris Island, where new marines are trained, when we came upon a Tanger Outlet store.
“Hey, did you hear that Tanger is expanding its chain one final time?” Scott said. “They’re building a new store at the marine base. It’s going to be called Last Tanger on Parris.”
My Track Record 
I was there and I can vouch for Greg’s assertion that ‘you had to be there’.