Three prisoners were being transported to jail!
On a dreary prison transport bus, three men sat in shackles, headed toward many years behind bars. The steady rumble of the engine filled the silence until boredom finally pushed them to start talking. Each of them had been allowed to bring one personal item—a small comfort to help them cope with life in prison.
The first prisoner broke the silence. “Looks like we’re going to be here a long time. What did you bring to help pass the time?”
The second man held up a box of oil paints. He said he planned to paint scenes from prison life—trying to find beauty even among the bars and shadows. He joked that he might become the “Grandma Moses of the cell block.”
The first man smiled and pulled out a deck of cards. “Fifty-two ways to fight boredom,” he said. Poker, solitaire, gin rummy—plenty of ways to keep busy.
Across the aisle, the third man just grinned, clearly hiding something. When the others pressed him to show what he brought, he proudly held up a box of tampons. The other two stared in confusion. “What are you going to do with those in a men’s prison?”
He tapped the box and read the label with confidence: “Well, according to this, I can go horseback riding, swimming, and roller-skating.”
The Numbered Joke System
Later that night, a new prisoner arrived just as “lights out” echoed through the cell blocks. Darkness settled in, but the place was far from quiet.
From somewhere down the row, a voice shouted, “Number twelve!” The entire block burst into laughter—shouting, banging on the bars, and whistling.
A few minutes later another voice called out, “Number four!” Once again the place erupted with laughter.
Puzzled, the newcomer asked his cellmate what was going on. The older inmate explained, “We’ve heard the same jokes so many times that we just gave them numbers. Now we just call out the number instead of telling the whole joke.”
Wanting to join in, the newcomer thought for a moment and then shouted, “Number twenty-nine!”
The reaction was immediate and massive. The laughter echoed through the whole prison, louder than before, with inmates nearly gasping for breath.
Confused, the newcomer asked, “Why was twenty-nine so much funnier than the others?”
His cellmate wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and said, “Kid… we’ve never heard that one before.”
