Sister Bay’s Age Inspires Joke Contest

Thanks to the Internet, when the Census was done in 2000, Americans were able – for the first time – to see and explore all the data the government collects through these surveys. All this data was suddenly available, broken down in innumerable ways and covering every inch of our geography and population. For a numbers junky like myself, it was absolute heaven.

There was, however, an unanticipated down side. When all the numbers were tabulated and posted, my hometown was shown to have the highest median age of any community in the state of Wisconsin. According to the numbers, Sister Bay had a population of 886 residents in 2000 and the median age of those residents was 61.4 years of age.

It wasn’t long before this revelation was picked up and written about by the media. Stories appeared in the local paper, in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and in the Chicago Tribune (and possibly others that I missed). And it didn’t take me very long to become angry.

“Wait a minute,” I said to anyone who would listen. “The data fails to take into account that Sister Bay is home to the only two retirement/assisted living facilities in northern Door County. If we are going to be fair about this, the relative age of the residents in these facilities should be shared by all the northern Door villages and towns.”

I wrote letters to all the papers that ran stories on my hometown’s relative age but…none were printed.

Now the 2010 Census data is on the Internet and – guess what – Sister Bay’s median age is even older. Now the average age of a resident in my hometown is listed as 62.7 years of age.

You may expect me to still be angry about this statistical anomaly, but I am not. Instead I have resigned myself to the fact that as long as Sister Bay provides the only two retirement/assisted living facilities in northern Door County we will always be the oldest community in Wisconsin and, possibly, the Upper Midwest.

You may think this resignation is a sign of age on my part; that I am simply becoming too old, myself, to carry on the fight. The truth, however, is that I remembered something that served me well when I was much younger.

Back when I was in high school I was obscenely skinny. To make matters worse, between my sophomore and junior years I grew five inches taller without any appreciable weight gain. I was so skinny that my mother was forced to sew extra fabric to the bottom of my pants legs just so I had something to wear to school.

Needless to say, my skinniness was ripe fodder for all manner of kidding from my classmates. But I discovered something interesting in school. If I made fun of my own skinniness my classmates stopped picking on me. Suddenly the situation became something we all could laugh about.

I had a history teacher my junior year that liked to tease his students. Early in the year I arrived to class late and Mr. Van Galder asked me why. “Well,” I replied, “ I was just one block from school, Mr. Van Galder, when I saw a leaf, blowing in the wind heading my direction. I did my best to dodge it, but it hit me straight in the chest. By the time I wrestled my way out from under it, I was knocked six blocks back.”

Of course, the entire class was in hysterics, and I managed to avoid a detention. It also began a routine that carried on the rest of the year. Periodically Mr. Van Galder would ask me, “How skinny are you today, Mr. Grutzmacher?” And I would reply with something like, “Well, my parents got so tired of me losing my key to the house that they took the weather stripping off the back door so I can slip in when it’s locked.”

With this experience from my past in mind, I have decided that the best course of action is for Sister Bay to embrace its distinction as Wisconsin’s oldest community and to get ahead of the entire country by making fun of ourselves before they can make fun of us.

Thus, I am announcing a contest: send me your best “How old is Sister Bay…” joke(s). Don’t just recycle “old” jokes – make them Sister Bay specific. To get you started and give you an idea of what I am looking for, here are a few examples.

Do you know why Sister Bay is dead after dark? Because the majority of the population is too old to drive and the rest have restrictions on their licenses that prevent them from driving after dark.

Or this from my mother, after hearing that the 2010 Census says that 103 residents of Sister Bay are women 85 years of age or older and 36 residents are men 85 years of age or older.

Did you hear about Sister Bay’s new advertising campaign? The ads feature the 36 men 85 years of age and older all smiling. And the copy reads: “Why Are These Men Smiling? Come to Sister Bay and Find Out!”

Or this – from me – which I readily acknowledge is tacky, but…

Did you hear that Sister Bay was thinking about bringing back the Soapbox Derby to Fall Fest? The problem is that there just aren’t any kids the right age, so for 2012 they are considering a Pine Box Derby.

Feeling inspired? Think you can do better? Send me your jokes at Sister Bay’s expense. I will print the best submissions in my Fall Fest column and the very best submission I receive will be rewarded with a copy of Justin Isherwood’s new book, Pulse, a collection of his essays that originally appeared in this fine publication’s pages.

As usual, employees of Peninsula Publishing & Distribution (this paper’s parent company) and members of my family are welcome to submit entries, but they cannot win the grand prize. In the event that Dana Delany chooses to enter, two grand prizes will be awarded, because – other than my dear wife, Barb – Dana Delany is my abiding weakness.

So send your entries to [email protected] Let’s show everyone that while we may be old, we are damn clever here in Sister Bay.