Chapter Text
The chilly air followed Ben into the small grocery store but was soon met with the conflicting heated air from the inside. He shivered and grabbed a basket from the front of the doors. His first year living in New York was beginning to feel a bit rough when winter came. Well, it wasn’t winter quite yet, really, but it felt like that to Ben. His university life was still fairly unstable and as his first real year away from home, he had no idea how to function. He was tired, tired, and pretty damn tired nearly all the time, and school hadn’t even gotten terribly difficult yet. The cheap flat he shared with classmate off-campus was a bit of a mess on his end and he hadn’t had a well-made meal in about two months. Honestly, he rather missed his mum.
Walking through the aisles and taking into consideration the overall lack of money in his wallet, he looked for something cheap that wasn’t instant noodles or spaghetti. Ben couldn’t begin to tell anyone how sick he was of instant noodles and spaghetti. Neither he nor his flatmate could really cook and both of them were tired of it. After scanning the aisles up and down, Ben sighed and settled for instant noodles and spaghetti. He walked up to the open cash register, depressingly putting the week’s worth of spaghetti and instant noodles on the counter.
The young cashier looked him up and down before beginning to scan the items. This same guy had always worked when Ben went to the store. As Ben started to pull out cash to pay, the cashier smiled.
“What do you call a blind dinosaur?”
Ben was thrown off guard for a moment. “Excuse me?”
“What do you call a blind dinosaur?”
“What- I, uh, I don’t know.”
“Doyouthinkhesaurus.”
The two made awkwardly long eye-contact before he got it. “Oh. Sorry, I- uh, I just wasn’t expecting that.”
“What do you call a triceratops that scores his first goal? A dino-score!” He said, ringing him up. “Cash or credit?”
Giving out a huff of a laugh, Ben shook his head. “Cash, please.” It was difficult to restrain a smile due to the rather terrible jokes.
The cashier smiled again. “Ah! There we go! You smiled! Anyway, your total is six-fifty.”
“Six-fifty?” He mumbled in surprise, pulling out his last ten-dollar-bill. “Jesus I’m broke.”
“Do you go to NYFA?” Joseph (Ben read his nametag) asked.
Ben paused, nodding slowly. “How’d you know?”
“Kind of hard to miss the big logo on your sweatshirt, buddy.”
Looking down, he now felt a tad bit stupid for forgetting what he was even wearing. Ben was such a mess today, and really this conversation felt so out of place for his normal routine of not having time to hear jokes and even just talk to strangers.
“Oh. Well, yeah.”
“I go there too, actually.”
Woah.
“Really? What major?”
“Filmmaking. What about you?”
“Acting. I’ve never seen you around, but I guess that’s why.”
“Well, anyway, three-fifty is your change, and have a splendid day.”
“You too.”
For the next month, Ben would come once a week and be told terrible jokes from that same cashier. He couldn’t help but look forward to it, honestly. They didn’t have lots of communication aside for the one or two jokes Joseph would give, but it always brought a smile to his tired face. The one time there was another cashier instead of his usual, he felt a bit sad. There was just an awkward silence before a, “ Cash or credit? ” now. Although it was weird, he found himself almost worried that he no longer worked there and would never tell him another joke. Jeez, Ben was almost grossed out by his attachment. Thankfully, Joseph had come back the next week and his worry had been for naught.
One day, Ben was in the small living area reading over an assignment when his flatmate walked into the room.
“Hey, do you know someone named Joe?” Gwilym asked, taking a sip from his water bottle.
“I don’t think I do.” He responds, not thinking about the cashier.
“Oh. Well, I have a friend named Joe and he was wondering if the two of us would want to go out with a group for lunch.”
He puts the papers down on their makeshift coffee table (a depressing trunk that once held Ben’s clothing on the flight over from London). “Alright. Sounds good to me.”
The two then left, meeting up with some other acting majors and a rather familiar directing major. The second Ben’s eyes met with his, the other broke out into a grin.
Oh. Joseph is Joe. I probably could have guessed that.
“Hey!” he said, almost excitedly. “What sound does a t-rex make when it sleeps?”
Ben shook his head with a laugh. “I don’t know.”
“A dino-snore!”
“God, I think that’s your worst one yet.”
Gwilym noticed the two talking and walked over. “Ben, I thought you said you didn’t know Joe.”
“Gwil, this is the guy I bother with jokes every day,” Joe says with a smile, pointing at him. “I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Of course, I know him. We share a flat off campus.”
“Well then, dude, I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but your sodium intake is through the roof!”
“I can’t help it that we can only afford so much when Ben hasn’t got a job like I do!”
Way to out me, he thought to himself. It wasn’t exactly his fault! Okay, so maybe it was his fault, but he genuinely had been trying to find work! There was just so much going on that he may or may not had forgotten to keep looking after October. Now as it was brought up, Ben couldn’t help but feel rather guilty and embarrassed.
“There’s an opening at the store, if you need a word of recommendation. I’ll just need to call my manager.” Joe said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? Would you do that?” Ben asked.
“Yeah! I mean, like, I am the manager, so there’s no problem there.”
From there, Joe continued to give him business information and a wild backstory pertaining to his high school career and desperate need for a job. There were too many details to fully recite, but it did involve a police chase and stolen eggs. Ben wasn’t really sure if he was to actually believe any of this, but it did make for an interesting story.
The next few days were interesting. As Ben was thrown into Gwilym’s social circle, he was also signing up for a quick job-training session with Joe. It ended up turning out that the open position dealt with storage cleaning and restocking shelves. Although not particularly interesting, he would be making $14 an hour. That was well-over good enough for him.
It was on his first day of work when he first heard it: something that made him feel a little bit confused. To set the scene, Ben stood in the canned section. As he put up new cans of corn, he found himself wondering why so many people bought it. That’s when the customer inside began to check out.
“What do you call it when a dinosaur crashes its car? Also, cash or credit?”
“I don’t know, what do you call it?” The customer responds, obviously pleasantly surprised. “Credit, please.”
“Tyrannosaurus wreck!”
The two laughed for a moment as the customer paid. Ben may or may not have been peeking at them from the end of the aisle, pretending he wasn’t.
This time, though, the customer responded with a joke of their own!
“What’s a dinosaur’s least favourite reindeer?”
Joe was clearly happy with the other person playing along. “Which one?”
“Comet.”
It was a dumb joke, but Joe still laughed as though it were hilarious. As the customer finished paying and left, Ben came out from the aisle.
“Why do you do that? Tell them jokes, I mean. And especially dinosaur-themed ones. I don’t get it,” he said, leaning against the counter.
Smiling and finishing putting away the money and cleaning his station a bit, Joe looked over at him. “I do it because although they’re bad, they usually make the unexpecting person laugh. That just makes me happy, I guess. What kind of person doesn’t like dinosaur jokes anyway?”
“Do people always respond back with their own jokes?”
“Nope. That also makes me happy, though.”
Something about that response sparked an idea in his head, fueled by nothing but perhaps the need to make a new friend. The second Ben got back home to his flat, he ignored Gwilym welcoming him back and plopped down on the couch. Opening the internet on his phone, he immediately looked up dinosaur jokes and read through what felt like two-hundred lists. Nothing was worth Joe’s time (despite many of the ones he had told Ben being on those lists). He needed something better, something good. Staring at the empty notes page on his screen, Ben soon realized that he hadn’t pursued a career in the comedic arts for good reason.
“Shit. Gwil?” He called out, seeing his friend look up from his laptop.
“Yeah?”
“Do you know any good dinosaur jokes?”
Gwilym stared at him for a few seconds. “No? What’s all this about? Are you trying to out-funny Joe?”
“Maybe,” Ben shrugged.
“Well, good luck with that.”
“Thanks. I’m so glad I have your inspiring help to guide me through this.”
“No problem.”
Funny Joke for Joe: Try #1