#i don't really think other variants of this meme are as funny as the original but this image came to me in a vision and so it was made

[moonsidesong]

[spookierz]

'Whats green and goes slam, slam, slam, slam? A four door pickle!'

A few nights ago I was looking through a trunk of my mothers things from when she was a girl in the eighties. Amidst these things were a few 'riddle books' she had made, with fun riddles/jokes accompanied by matching crayon drawings. Most of them were normal, most of them I had already heard countless times. Besides the one on the very first page.

'Whats green and goes slam slam slam slam?' 'A 4 door pilkle!'

I didn't get it. My initial assumption was that she had been trying to come up with a riddle on her own, completely original. This assumption was not supported by the following pages, all of which were familiar and classic. I kept thinking about it- a four door pickle? That isn't funny! Jokes flying over my head is a common occurrence, so I went to look online to see if I could find an explanation.

The first thing that popped up was a reddit post in r/jokes from nine years ago, which reads:

'What is green and goes slam, slam, slam, slam?

A four door pickle!'

This confirms the joke was not made up by my nine year old mother. The only response to the post reads as such:

'House of Pain?'

I don't know what this means.

Most of the search results are similar- people sharing the joke online, and it being met with minimal reaction. Here, I found a meme uploaded five years ago to imgflip. It has three upvotes. This is the most recent

I was - am- thinking that 'a four door pickle' is intended to be a play on words. Say it really fast, and it sounds like something! Afordorpickle. I don't get it. My mind also wandered to sports- Pickleball!!!!!

I've played pickleball before, and I don't remember any doors. I also don't think it existed in the eighties. And like, I get it. Doors slam, so four doors would slam, slam, slam, slam, pickles are famously green. But I don't get it.

'Whats green and goes slam?

A one door pickle!'

I tried focusing on other parts of the joke- maybe the punchline was in the first line. Looking up 'slam slam slam slam' led me to something called tennis, which is kind of like pickleball. It has something called a 'Grand Slam.'

Pickleball:

Im on the pickleball wikipedia page, learning more about pickleball than I've ever wished too. It was created in 1965, which is absolutely tragic. Fifty-eight long, long years we've shared the earth with the wretched sport. This, devastatingly, puts pickleball back on the table for something this joke could be referencing- but first, to save myself any more grief, I'm gonna search for anything more online.

VARIANTS!

'Whats yellow and goes slam, slam, slam, slam?

A four door banana'

'Whats purple and goes slam slam slam slam?

A four door grape'

'What is red and goes “slam! Slam! Slam! Slam!”?

A four door tomato'

So, its an anti-joke, right? Its a joke that's funny because its stupid. But there's still something itching deep inside of me, telling me to dig deeper. This joke dates to at least 40 years past- where did it start? Was the original the pickle variant, or something else? Is there context missing? I have to know.

I've read so many riddle books.

'What do you call a boy whos sick and tired and has gone cross eyes from all this damn wordplay?

Birdie!'

My head is going slam, slam, slam, slam into a wall. A four door fruit. A four door vegetable. Slam, slam, slam, slam. Does anyone actually think these jokes are funny? Did anyone sharing these online actually understand the punchline? In one of the riddle books I read today, there was a blurb at the end that stuck with me.

'In a sense, riddles are as fragile and yet as durable as fine bone china. The best survive being handed on from generation to generation, while new ones share elements with the past.'

Riddle Red Riddle Book by Ann Bishop, 1969

I think this riddle is on its way out- and good riddance to it, too. But, still. When my mom was nine years old, this joke stuck with her enough she wrote it down and drew a picture to match, alongside classics like 'Why did the cow go to the drive-in?' (To see the moo-vies!)

There's something meta to say about how the joke is sticking with me, too, but a joke isn't meant to stick with you as a haunting memory of what used to be considered funny. I'll ask my mom next time I see her if she remembers what she meant when she wrote it, (I realize now I've been making it sound like she's dead- she is not.) though I'm pretty sure she wont remember.

I've heard a lot of talk about the ghost of languages, of the death of information, what the passage of time eats and the small remnants its left behind, and I can't help but feel like, in a melodramatic sense, I'm watching this riddle being eaten alive. The first time I read it, I laughed- I was staring at a relic from a girl I've never met, and who I've known all my life, and who couldn't spell pickle right. It was absurd, and I didn't get it, and it was two in the morning and the girl who wrote it was my mother, sleeping two sets of stairs above me, and that's what made it funny. That's what I mean by it being haunting- the joke is there, its fulfilling its purpose, its making me laugh. But the context is gone. The context is gone, and I've filled it in with something else and it still works, but not the way its meant too. Its a dying riddle. And its so, so stupid.