I was probably twelve when I heard it. I was definitely in junior high; I distinctly remember the kid who told it. I’d met him that year.

I’d only beome aware of sex as a concept a few years earlier, and I was always somewhat repulsed by the subset of so-called dirty jokes centered around sex, as opposed to, say, racial stereotypes or jokes about physical disabilities. That is not to say that I found the other categories less objectionable, even as a youngster.

Despite what I assume was normal adolescent curiosity regarding sex – maybe an excessive amount of curiosity, but presumably not dysfunctional or harmful curiosity – I always found sex jokes crass and egregious. Sure, there was something delightfully taboo about saying, listening to, or reading things of which conservative parents in 1980s America would disapprove. But once I got past the novelty of hearing one of my peers say the word “pussy”, I found little if any value in any of it.

I’m not going to judge someone who titters at the word “tit”; to each their own. However, as sex jokes frequently seemed to involve wholesale misogyny, they were never going to be a great love of mine. That’s not to say I was a feminist at that age. In fact, I likely would have taken umbrage at the label. (“What? Feminist? Look, lady, I’m all man.”) And while I was staunchly opposed to such low-brow boorishness on principle, I’d be lying if I said I never flipped through a paperback copy of one of the notorious Truly Tasteless Jokes books while my parents were browsing a different aisle at the local Crown Books.

Some fun facts: Ashton Applewhite, who published the long-running Truly Tasteless Jokes series under the pen name Blanche Knott, is a woman. The categories found in a typical installment of the series included Jewish jokes, Black jokes, Polish jokes (of course), gay jokes, dead baby jokes, handicapped jokes, and Helen Keller jokes (which is technically an offshoot of handicapped jokes, I suppose). Currently in her sixties, Applewhite is currently an anti-ageism activist.

Anyway, back to that miserable day in 1988 or 1989. (Why miserable, you ask? Well, are your memories of junior high school/middle school/intermediate school/child prison pleasant? If so, good for you, I guess. Mine are horrendous, and I’m grateful it only lasted two years.)

I don’t remember where we were, so for the purposes of this post, I’ll take some artistic license by setting the scene in the boys’ gym locker room, because that’s where such hijinks, skylarkings, and tomfoolery often take place. For all I know, however, it could have been on the playground, in the halls, or even in a classroom. Though not in Mr. Kern’s class; he didn’t tolerate hijinks, skylarkings, or tomfoolery.

P.E. had just wrapped up, and we were changing out of our reversible green and gold gym shirts (so none of us would have to be “skins”) and way-too-short-even-for-the-’80s gym shorts. As I pulled my backpack out of my locker and replaced it with my gym clothes, one kid whose locker was across from mine walked over on his way out of the locker room. I’m going to call him Jimmy.

“Hey Jack,” he said with the kind of smirk you’d expect to see on the face of a kid who heard his parents fucking the night before and can’t wait to tell you all about it. Once he was sure he had my attention he went on: “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle?”

It seemed a strange question to ask. Was he inquiring about carbonation? I knew an unopened bottle of soda would lose fizz at a faster rate than an unopened can, but I figured it had more to do with economics. Despite the more rapid loss of carbonation, it was probably cheaper to buy a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper than it was to buy an equal amount in cans. Anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure because my parents almost never bought cans, and as die-hard diet soda drinkers, they stuck to Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, or more often the store-brand equivalent.

Then it hit me: “Is this a joke?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not asking because you really want to know.”

“No, it’s a joke, you fucking asshole.” As he spoke the last two words he slammed his open hand against the locker next to mine, and the sound echoed off the walls. Jimmy looked around the locker room in the hopes of finding someone more likely to indulge him, but alas, the only stragglers left were even dorkier than I was.

I re-stated the question: “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle?” Then he did as well. I thought about possible answers: Because it doesn’t come in cans. Except no, it totally does. Being twelve and completely controlled by my hormones, Jimmy’s use of the word “come” was not lost on me. I wondered if the answer had something to do with that. But how could it? Dr. Pepper is a drink. Drinks can’t ejaculate. I momentarily imagined the soda being “ejaculated” from a machine into empty bottles at the bottling plant, but realized I was overthinking the entire thing. That couldn’t have been it.

“I give up,” I said at long last. “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle.”

Jimmy kept me in suspense a couple seconds before unleashing the punchline with a confidence that betrayed his certainty that my mind was going to be utterly blown:

“His wife died.”

Jimmy gave a hearty guffaw and headed for the door. I hurried to catch up to him, and as we stepped out of the locker room and into the sunshine, I asked him, “His wife died? What does that mean? What does that even have to do with it?” I didn’t even touch on the remarkable contrivance of someone with the surname “Pepper” pursuing a degree in medicine.

“Think about it,” he said in a way that seemed cerebral and in control but thirty years later tells me Jimmy had no more of an idea as to the meaning of the punchline than I did. In fact, he probably had less of one.

“What?” I asked. “Was she cremated? The bottle is the urn where he keeps her ashes?”

Jimmy nodded. “Exactly.”

“That’s really…” My voice trailed off as I tried to find the right word to describe the joke’s nebulous, unsatisfying payoff. Reaching? Unnecessarily complicated? Flat-out stupid? Any of those would have worked. But my mind was full of questions, and I ultimately said nothing.

The following period was English, and I spent the entirety of our discussion of Steinbeck’s The Pearl contemplating why someone – a widower who just happened to be a doctor by the name Pepper – would jerk off into the urn where his dead wife’s ashes were stored. I admittedly didn’t know much about sex, but I found it weird and decidedly unsexy to do such a thing. In fact, it seemed to border on desecration of human remains.

It didn’t occur to me until years later that my cremation theory was probably flat-out wrong, and Jimmy, who was as clueless as I was, expected me to laugh at the punchline and not ask questions. I’m guessing he overheard his father telling the joke, overheard the laughs that followed, and despite not understanding why it was funny, decided to bring it to school with him in the hopes of getting some laughs as well.

In fact, when I Googled the joke this evening, I found the following explanation on Reddit.

Dr pepper is the name of a popular soda, but it can also be a person’s name. Dr pepper comes in (orgasms into) bottles because his wife died and he doesn’t get sex anymore.

I confess that if Jimmy had given me this explanation back in 1988, I would have been just as confused. His wife died, so he has no choice but to literally fuck a random empty bottle? Jesus, how thin is this guy’s member? I guess saying that the grieving widower comes in a wide-mouthed mason jar wouldn’t have worked.

Anyway, how does his wife being dead lead to him fucking a bottle? Can’t he masturbate with his hand? Bottles are made of glass and they can break, severely lacerating his penis. Anyway, is he never again allowed to date, and thus possibly fuck, an actual human being? I understand going through a period of voluntary celibacy following the passing of one’s spouse, but that just seems unnecessarily restrictive.

And why does the fact that he’s fucking a bottle mean his wife is dead? In theory couldn’t any single man who who can’t get laid fuck a bottle? I realize most of them aren’t going to bother with a bottle when they have two hands that our species evolved for that specific purpose. Anyway, I feel like this explanation is a non-starter, and that’s probably what led me to the “cremation” thing thirty years ago.

In retrospect, a better punchline would have been “Because he didn’t want to cut his dick on a can.”