Happy Halloween & Bad French Jokes

Happy Halloween, everybody. I'm definitely missing it this year; although most people know what it is in France, most people don't even realize that it's today, and nobody celebrates it really. You have to admit, it's one of the best possible holidays a kid could ever dream of: getting to dress up in a costume of your choice, followed by everybody giving you candy. If you're American and reading this: eat some candy corns for me!

Two very, very corny French jokes told to me by my 7-yeard-old neice Maeva over the weekend:

Joke #1: Qui est bebe animal le plus malheureux? (Translation: Which baby animal is the most unhappy?)
Answer: Le veau, parce que sa maman est vache.
(Translation: The calf, because his mom is a cow.) The joke is in fact a "play-on-words": the word "vache" means not only "cow" but also means "mean" or "evil". I had to have Claire explain it to me...

Joke #2: Avez-vous entendu la blague de la clown qui dit "non"?
(Translation: Have you heard the joke about the clown who says no?)
It's a variation of an old classic: the victim instinctively says "no" when asked if he has heard the joke before, and thus according to logic he is therefore a clown. Maeva nailed me on this and was quite proud of doing so.

Ah, the bad jokes of a 7-year-old....some things are truly cross-cultural.