Old age, perhaps more than any other stage of life, has its own distinct repertoire of humor. This was especially true in the later Borscht Belt era, with its aging hotel guests and roots in the immigrant culture of an earlier generation. Comedians had a line they could always fall back on to rescue themselves, if the audience had managed only tepid laughter to a jocular offering: The comic would point to one half of the audience, then the other half, and complain, “I think this side must be sittin' shiva for that side [one side in mourning for the other half, which is dead]!” What follows are a few among my favorite jokes and stories illustrating common geriatric themes:

Loss of sexual interest: An attractive middle-aged woman walks into a nursing home donning a large robe, under which she's wearing nothing at all. Finding an open room in which an elderly patient is sitting on the edge of his bed, she steps in, throws open her robe and says to him, “Hey there Big Boy, would you like some SUPER SEX?” The man considers for a moment and mumbles, “I'll have the soup.”

Dreams of youth: An elderly man is telling his friend how it's his dreams that keep him young. “For instance, last night I dreamt I put on my old sports jacket and hiked over a mile to Coney Island, I walked along the boardwalk, enjoying the fresh air, I had a couple of hamburgers, a couple of hot dogs, and then I walked all the way back home, and I felt great. See, my dreams keep me young.”

“You call that a dream?” his friend says, “why, I had a dream last night, there comes a knock on the door and who do you think it was? Marilyn Monroe! (Sure, Marilyn Monroe – you remember them.) And she's barefoot – but barefoot up to here!” he says, putting the edge of his hand just below his neck. “And a minute later, another knock on the door, and it's Liz Taylor. And she's also barefoot up to here.” “You dirty dog,” the other man says, “you had two of them – why didn't you give ME a call?” “I did,” says his friend, “your wife told me, you took a walk to Coney Island!”

Constipation: Three geezers are having a conversation. The first complains, “I'm 84 years old, and I can't. I've tried prunes... didn't work. I even went so far as to try a cigarette after coffee in the morning, but... nothing. By me, a good week is maybe four or five times in the week.”

The second man says, “You think YOU have problems, I'm 88 years old and by me, a good week is maybe two or three times in the whole week.”

“What are you two kids talking,” says the third man, “I'm 94 years old, and every morning, eight o'clock in the morning like clockwork, I have a bowel movement.”

“That's great,” his friends say, “every morning, eight o'clock like clockwork...that's wonderful, that's...”

“What's so wonderful,” the man replies, “I don't wake up till nine!”

Jokes about memory loss are not nice, since this is a serious problem for older folks, even a tragedy for some, so I'm not gonna tell... well... maybe just one... while I can still remember it:

This elderly couple has invited another elderly couple over for dinner. The husband of the host couple greets his guests in the living room, while his wife is still busy in the kitchen. “You know,” he tells them, “we've been seeing a new doctor, who's prescribed a new drug that's doing wonders for our memory problems.” “Really?” his guests say, “we've been having memory issues ourselves – what's the new drug called, maybe we should be taking it.” “Um, uh, it's... well, it's a complicated name, I can't quite recall...” the host says. “Well, what's the name of your new doctor?” the guests ask, “maybe we'll try to get an appointment.” “Um,” the host begins, “um, the new doctor's name... uh, help me out a little, will you, I'm trying to think of, like, the name of a flower, it smells nice, it has thorns...” “Rose?” suggests one of the guests. “Thank you,” says the host. He turns around toward the kitchen. “Rose, what's the name of that new doctor we've been seeing?”

Good-natured self deprecation: In 1980, during one of my hitchhiking trips to the Arkansas Ozarks, I was seated with many other folks on the lawn around the Stone County courthouse in Mountain View during the annual Mountain Music Festival and noticed three old men with weather-beaten visages, seated just to my right. I got to talking with them and finally asked if I could take their picture, to which they readily assented. After I snapped the photo, one of them spoke up: “Do you grow a garden up there in New York State?” he asked. “Yes, I do,” I replied. “Well, you won't have no problem with rabbits or woodchucks in your garden this summer,” he said. “How so?” “You just attach that photo to a stick and put it there in your garden,” he said, “and it'll scare them all away.”

Some years ago, at a public event with a history / heritage theme, I spied an elderly country rustic wandering near my table, where I had books for sale, whose dress vaguely suggested a Civil War uniform. I decided to take a chance with a harmless joke. He responded to my wisecrack in good humor, and he one-upped me in a way that was priceless: “Say, old-timer,” I said, “so tell me, which Civil War battle did YOU fight in?” He paused just a moment and replied, “Bunker Hill.” And then he said, “I think you know my wife.” It turns out I had known her for decades (she was a local public office holder).

For years, I was friends with former huckleberry picker Florence Pitkin, and used to visit her a few times a year at her home in Walden, when she was in her eighties and well into her nineties. We often did a lot of laughing together, whether reminiscing about berrypicking days or just joking or playing board games. One time, as a way of illustrating her own good health as a nonagenarian, she related that a friend of hers at the Walden Senior Citizens had asked her, “Florence, and how many pills do YOU have to take a day?” And she had proudly answered, “One.” “Florence,” I said, “you missed an opportunity – you should have said, 'One. And that's my birth control pill!'”

I'll close with a story that is not a joke at all, but rather an inspiration, a true example of how some lucky souls manage to maintain a healthy, physically vigorous and useful life even at a truly advanced age:

In 1990, during the sixth of my month-long springtime trips to Crete, I stopped in the little village of Geraki (pronounced “Zherachi” in the Cretan dialect then still common). This was en route to the Plateau of Lasithi, which I planned to approach via a route I'd never taken before, from Geraki directly up through a high, desolate region with only a couple of tiny and isolated settlements. These were connected to Geraki by what amounted to hardly more than primitive agricultural trails. I knew a teenage boy in the village whom I'd first met five years earlier and seen again in '88. He was now 17, and I would have a place to spend the night before starting out on the long journey to the Lasithi plateau the next morning. In the village, I was told that the boy's father had died suddenly a few months before, and that my friend Manolis had now replaced his father tending the family's flock of sheep and goats and making cheese. When I stopped at my friend's house, his mother remembered me and gave me directions how to find him, in a small hut nearly an hour's hike up the mountainside behind the village. After visiting with her for half an hour or so, I left my backpack at the house and set out.

I found Manolis asleep in the hut. We were joined by a man in his fifties, also a shepherd, with his own flock and hut a few hundred yards from that of my friend. Manolis showed me the several big wheels of cheese that were aging in a tiny stone enclosure, separate from the hut in which he had a bed. He then fed us a snack consisting of red wine and halvah, and toward the end of the afternoon, I got to watch him milk his flock.

The man had an old pickup truck, and my friend would ride with him up the mountain and back down to the village on most days. At dusk, the three of us squeezed into the only seat and began the slow, bumpy ride down the mountain. In the twilight, we passed an old man sitting side-saddle on a donkey, slowly wending their way down toward the village.

“Einai eneneenta eksi chronia eton,” said the driver, “kai akoma ftiachni tiri.” He is ninety-six years old, and he's still making cheese.