What’s the most effort you’ve ever put into a single joke.

My house is always a huge mess. When my best friend told me he was coming over to introduce his new girlfriend I cleaned everything (took me 3 days), dressed up in my most expensive suit, put on some Mahler and just sat there in the middle of the livingroom with a glass of wine.
All that just to say “Oh, I totally forgot you were coming over. How embarrassing, don’t mind the mess.”

I once used a straw to suck the creme out of my mate’s Creme Egg, then another straw to replace the creme with tabasco sauce, then sealed up the chocolate using steam from a kettle. He ate it.

My mom says “but um” very frequently so i trained myself to end it with “bum pshhh” (like a drum set) over and over for hours on end so whenever she said “but um” I would instinctually turn it into a joke.
It’s a sad life i live.

I once peeled an entire thing of grapes and put them into a bowl. My wife ate a few and liked them, she asked what they where and I told her they where Dingleberries. Anyways, I did this twice and she for some reason couldn’t figure out they where just peeled grapes. So we went to the supermarket together and she wanted to get some, I told her she had to go ask the guy because the where not where they usually where. So she wandered over to the produce manager and asked him where he kept the dingleberries. The look on his face was priceless and the dead seriousness on her face sold it for me. He just said they didn’t carry dingleberries. I laughed for a good hour at her when I told her what they where and what a dingleberry was.
I know a guy who walked around with a colourful handkerchief up his sleeve for months, waiting for someone to say “hey, I’ve got a magic trick”. When someone finally did, he said “I’ve got a better one”, pulled the handkerchief out of his sleeve, threw it in the air and walked away.

I was laying in bed with my girlfriend (now wife) one night and pretended to start giving her a hickey on her forehead. When I say pretend I mean exactly that — I made the noise but didn’t use enough suction to have anything happen. I was just doing it to freak her out.
She immediately freaked out and stopped me saying “Don’t give me a hickey on my forehead! Are you crazy!?”
As if it were the most natural thing in the world and that she was the one in the wrong, I said “you can’t get a hickey on your forehead, it’s physically impossible because the skin is too thin.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, go check the mirror.”
There was nothing there. So I proceed to pretend to show her again.
I did this occasionally for about four to six months so she got really used to it like nothing would happen and it was normal. There was no reflex to get away or anything. The night before she was going home to see family and friends for Christmas, I did it for real and gave her a huge hickey in the middle of her forehead.
She was not happy.