The experience of not getting a dad joke (He brews it) then suddenly getting it (hebrews it) — describing what is really going on there.
The jocular question: “how does Moses make his tea?” The jocular response: “He brews it.” The mind, when it does not get the joke, hears he brews it, and when it does get the joke, hears hebrews it? Or does it hear, when it gets it, hebrews it and he brews it at once?
Envisioning the mind as a hollow bowling ball with two holes. To get the joke, the answer must fly through the one hole (the literal response) and out the other (the double entendre). When a person does not get the joke, it goes in and out the same hole. When a person gets the joke but does not find it funny, it passes through both holes but without having “touched base” (or perhaps having touched “the wrong base.”) When a person takes longer than he should to get the joke, then laughs harder than he should when he gets it, he is resisting any interpretation but a literal one, then is ultimately overwhelmed by the absurdity of trying to cram the nonsensical response through the only literal hole.
Question: to deliver the joke properly, on which syllable of the punchline should the teller place the accent? The question is whether to pronounce it as two unrelated words, “hebrews” and “it”, or as the phrase “he brews it”/ hebrewsit. (Or the question is whether to put the accent on the antepenult or penult, which is perhaps to say the same thing.) Attendant tended to mix it up without about equally hilarious results.
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