Knock-Knock

ertain events come with time stamps. Off-hand, I recall three: 9/11, the death of J.D. Salinger, and the first knock-knock joke by Syd, aged 2.

Master Syd's delivery of the joke is particularly notable because till then he preferred to stop after the initial "Who's there?" response and break out in laughter as if holding the punchline hostage was joke enough.

Just when he had conditioned us to expect his premature guffaws, he surprised us with the whole joke:

Syd: "Knock-knock."
Audience: "Who's there?"

Syd: "Syd."
Audience: "Syd who?"

Syd: "Syd down, you're rockin' the boat!"

The delivery of the punchline - on time and with gusto - brought the house down.

The knock-knock joke has made us laugh or roll our eyes since at least 1936. It survives as a corny hand-me-down from one generation to the next thanks to its tight five line formula; a formula that is so rote and delivered so quickly that the only bit in question is the last few words which we run up to like a cliff only to fall over like a lemming every time.

How did I get onto knock-knock jokes? Good question. After working on the marshmallow test story, I learned the importance of distraction from temptation. Writing knock-knock jokes is a good distraction. Telling them is even better.

Distractions are particularly important in "hot" times, that is, times when folks are apt to make poor decisions based on emotion (arguing balls and strikes after getting rung up only to get tossed) rather than better decisions during "cool" times (returning after a long walk following a disagreement).

Chapter after chapter and situation after situation, be they in the marshmallow test story of Cookie-Wise Pablo or an additional series of Pablo stories I'm outlining based on cognitive psychology studies regarding heuristics and biases, the hot/cold dichotomy appears frequently. Often it seems that will power and intelligence aren't so much required to make good decisions as the ability to distract oneself from temptation or "hot" scenarios.

So, in one story Pablo distracts himself by going for a walk. In another, he writes and tells knock-knock jokes. What do you do to cool down?