A joke I love that everyone else hates

Seriously, everyone hates this joke

Orange head.

I was always terrified of public speaking, so when I first started my professional career, I joined a Toastmasters club so I could try to be less freaked out about it. Toastmasters, for those who don’t know, is a club that has weekly meetings where people tell jokes, give prepared speeches, and give off the cuff short speeches on random topics, and give each other feedback and support.

People are very nice at Toastmasters, since everyone is trying to improve a skill that is quite intimidating. After every speech, long or short, people applaud. The role of Jester is given to a single person each week, who kicks off the proceedings with a joke. No matter how crappy the joke, people generally politely laugh and applaud afterwards.

So one week, I was given the role of Jester, and decided to tell a joke that I think is hilarious. I finished my joke, paused, and went back to my seat.

No one laughed.

No one applauded.

The General Evaluator, who wraps up the meeting with a generally positive and encouraging recap, said that the meeting was great… Except for my joke, which was just horrible.

I still thought it was hilarious.

So, without further ado, here is how I tell the joke - the “Orange Head” joke.

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A man walked into a bar. His head was an orange. He sits down and asks the bartender for a beer.

The bartender turns around to ask him which kind of beer, but then stops, nonplussed, upon first seeing the man.

The man notices the reaction and lets out a sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I know. My head is an orange. It’s weird. I get it. But can I get a beer? Any beer. I could really use one,” the man says.

The bartender slowly approaches him and squints his eyes. “…Your head really is an orange.”

“Yes, I am quite aware.”

“I… Okay. I’ll give you our house IPA.” The bartender pours the drink and hands it to the orange-headed man. The man gives a nods and starts drinking his beer.

The bartender thinks to leave the poor orange-headed man alone, but curiosity overcomes him and he can’t help himself. “Hey so uh, is there a story behind your uh… Orange… Head?”

The man sighs. “Well, yeah, but I don’t wanna get into it. It’s pretty embarrassing.”

The bartender presses on. “Hey look, I’m not judging or anything. Your drinks are on me today. I just… I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight if I don’t get the story.”

“No really, it’s just so stupid.”

“I’ve heard a lot of stupid things, trust me.”

The man could tell that the bartender was not going to give up. “Fine, fine. But only if you get me another one of these,” and lifted his cup. The bartender nodded, and the man started the story.

“So, I was cleaning out my garage, and in the corner I found this weird lamp I hadn’t seen before. And I rubbed it and a genie popped out and was all ‘blah blah I will grant you three wishes’ and I was like, what the heck? But then I thought, well whatever, I’ll bite. So I wished to be the richest man in the world.”

“Ah, but the lamp was actually cursed and turned your head into an orange?”

“What, no, no, I’ll get to that. No, I’m like, filthy rich. Here.” The man reached into his pocket and took out a solid block of gold. “I have like, a million of these. Here, you can have this one.”

The bartender was shocked. He picked up the gold bar. “This… Is real?”

“Yeah. It’s only worth like 50 grand or something. Just take it.”

“I can’t accept this…”

“Just take it, man. Seriously. I have more of these then I know what to do with. See, I have 5 more of them on me.” The man took out 5 more gold bars from his pockets and presented them to the bartender.

The bewildered bartender placed the gold bar next to the cash register. “Okay. Well, thank you. That’s incredibly generous.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the man said, and continued drinking his beer.

“Er, but then, how did you get an orange for a head?”

“Oh, right, that. So, then, after the genie made me filthy rich, I was like, oh hey, for my next wish, I wish that I was the most desirable man in the world to every woman.”

The bartender’s eyes lit up. “Ohhh okay, I see. Then he made you the most desirable man, but with the cost of having an orange as a head.”

The man rolled his eyes. “No, no. That’s not it. He granted the wish and it worked. See, look.”

The man got up from his seat and walked toward a woman and started chatting her up, and she basked in his attention. He asked for her number and she immediately gave it to him. He came back and showed the bartender, with a told-you-so expression on his orange face.

“She didn’t care about your orange head?”

“They never do.”

The bartender stared at the man with a disbelieving look, and there was silence for an awkward amount of time. The man’s orange expression started to darken as he stared at his drink. The bartender grew impatient of waiting for the story to resume.

“So… Then your third wish?”

“Yeah, you know, I really don’t wanna talk about it. It’s really embarrassing. I’ll just leave another gold bar and leave.” The orange-headed man reached to grab another gold bar, but the bartender stopped him.

“Seriously, I can’t accept another one of those. I just need to understand what happened…”

“It’s just lame, man.”

The bartender tried to sound as reassuring as possible. “No, trust me, I’ve heard so many things over my years here. Hell, I’ve done all sorts of embarrassing things. My wife left me over some bad choices. Could have had a fortune, but made dumb investments. I won’t judge anything you say. Trust me.”

The man let out a long sigh. “Fine. Fine.”

He took a deep breath, and began to tell his story again.

“Yeah, so this is where I fucked up. For my third wish, I wished to have an orange for a head.”