Visiting my latest grandchild last week, I pulled out an old joke that my
(frequently ribald) mother told me as a kid.
After the stunned deer-in-the-headlights look that my daughters gave me
after telling the joke I realized that they did not have the cultural
context to appreciate such high class humor.
So, to prepare equally disadvantaged people reading this list by giving the
context necessary, I have to provide some background:
Modern infant formula was developed in 1929. By the 1940s and 1950s,
physicians and consumers regarded the use of formula as a well known,
popular, and safe and many times desirable substitute for breastmilk. When
I was a baby, I was sent home with all kinds of formula samples. New
mothers were instructed as the the proper preparation of formula and
bottles, especially sterilizing the bottles and nipples in boiling water.
They were not given any instructions about nursing. Better living through
science.
OK, also when I was growing up, there were these scandalous joke books that
got smuggled into classrooms and passed around without the teacher seeing.
Most of them poked fun at those with Polish ancestry. Poland was a part of
the USSR in those days. And Pollack jokes were even told on TV. The early
Polish jokes originated in states like Wisconsin by German immigrants after
WWII were directly related to the wave of American jokes of the early
1960s. Hollywood often portrayed Polish folks as being backwards. So when
I was a kid, most of the jokes were Pollack jokes.
My kids apparently are totally unaware of all of this so they did not
appreciate this gem told to me by my dear departed mother:
Why don't Polish women nurse their babies?
Hurts too much to boil the nipples...
