>>>>Doctor, I haven't smoked my whole life, I never got drank, I avoided noisy parties, I never had sex. Today I'm celebrating my 90th birthday.
>>>
>>>I don't understand the use of word "celebrate" in this context...
>>
>>Yes, that's the point of this joke <g> The question How. I'm wondering why should I always explain the jokes I'm making.
>
>You shouldn't. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, nothing happened. From my experience, only about 30% of jokes translate well (if you know the target culture well and can adjust a few bits so that would not need explaining). Another 30% translate, but aren't funny in another culture. And for the remaining 40%, don't even try.
>

The thing is, I usually forget the exact words the joke was told and then I try to re-tell it, it's not that funny anymore...

>The trick, of course, is knowing where does the one you're trying out fit. There's no easy solution to this one, except analyzing in your head why did you laugh at that one when you first heard it, and would the target culture understand the context.
>
>In this case, I got the joke, and I just added a bit to it...
>
>> I guess it's either my peculiar sense of humor or the fact that I forgot to put a smiley in the anekdot I was telling.
>
>...and I also intentionally omitted the smiley. In my culture (the city, or maybe just the high school I attended) it was impolite to laugh first when you tell a joke. You had to wait for it to work, or just shut up if it didn't. Putting a smiley is the same as laughing before your audience does, IMO, so I'm with you here.
>
>As for context bound jokes, we had this one about the students in the Mathematical high school: since they didn't mingle with the rest of the world too much, they knew all the jokes they knew, and when they sit and tell them, there's nothing new. So they decided to code them. Now a joke-telling goes like this: someone says "49", and they all laugh for about five seconds - not a really good one. Another one says "123", and they laugh for 30 seconds, that's a good one. Then someone says "40", and they laugh for 15 seconds (not a bad one, but then not really good either), except one guy who laughs for full 45 seconds.
>
>- why did you laugh so long?
>
>- never heard that one before!