The Day I Forgot My Own Joke

When memory loss meets stand-up timing, recovery is the real punchline

(Intro by Vanessa)
Humor lives in our house. It always has.
But memory loss messes with timing. It edits punchlines and sometimes cuts the curtain cord mid-joke.

This piece from Tim made me laugh, wince, and cheer. Not because the joke is perfect (although it is), but because it shows just how much of him is still intact—timing, delivery, recovery, and that signature dry wit.

—Vanessa
(He’s still got it. Even when it briefly goes missing.)

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The Day I Forgot My Own Joke
By Tim Bartz

I love jokes.

In the Midwest, where I lived and worked for nearly twenty years, jokes were a staple of conversation. “Didja hear the one about…” starts a discussion nearly as often as the weather. (Although I have a personal rule: when weather enters a discussion, the real conversation has already ended.)

Jokes are found in every part of daily human existence—the more absurd the better. For example:

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “So, why the long face?”
(Horses are seldom funny, but we love them anyway.)

Charles Dickens walks into a bar and orders a martini. The bartender asks, “Olive or twist?”
(Who else could get a joke out of Dickens?)

A dyslexic guy walks into a bra.

Yes, there are disease jokes that are tragic and yet funny. You name it—there’s probably a joke to be found in anything, just to lighten the mood.

That’s why my slowly fading short-term memory due to Alzheimer's is a particularly painful one.
Especially when I forget a punchline.

It happened at the grocery store last week. One of the checkout clerks is always entertaining us with “Grand-dad Jokes” as she rings up customers. I’d promised her I would have a grocery joke next time—and I had one. It was ready in my brain. I was excited to lay it on her.

When it was my turn, I said, “Did you know that baggers can’t work at the juice bar?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “Really?”

And then… blank.

My punchline was gone.
It wasn’t there.
I smiled as the stares from the people around me hit like daggers. The joke was dying on the vine—and I couldn’t remember why.

Then—mercifully—it came back. I grinned and said,

“Everybody knows that baggers can’t be juicers!”

A few people chuckled. Others just smiled. That was fine. I passed it off as timing.
I finished paying for my groceries, grateful to still have some memory to rely on.

What’s my favorite joke?

An Alzheimer's guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender,
“Do I come here often?”

Now that’s funny.