Jokes are the No. 1 contaminant of my otherwise sacrosanct e-mail address at home. I can't recall passing on a joke. I probably have. But it's been a while. When the space shuttle crashed years ago, within 24 hours, there were these harsh chards of humor about astronauts in one's tuna.
Jokes never seem to carry bylines.
They just appear from the froth, like Aphrodite, fully formed. Or was it Athena. I can tell you a little about laughter and humor, about their deep roots. You'd have an event, like a saber-tooth tiger in the neighborhood. A guard cave guy would sound the alert cry.