A to Z Challenge 2026 - J - Contessina’s Collection of Human Treasures

“You can’t really appreciate a culture until you can penetrate their jokes. Everything else about it tries to obscure what they really think, but it’s the jokes that reveal the truth. Well, here’s a human joke about the Puck, dating back to when we first showed up on Earth, before we had assimilated the culture, originating from a club in Tampa, told by the great Terry Kane:

“Hey, have you heard about these aliens? Yeah. The short ones. The short ones! I forget what they’re called. You know which ones I’m talking about.

“Anyway, one day one of them, Doo, that’s his name, he’s going for a walk down a street in New York. Seeing the sights, right? These New Yorkers, they’ve seen everything. They fought the Danab on Fifth Avenue, right? They had beers with the Vanadi. They got aliens drunk! 

“So anyway, they see our guy Doo. They don’t know what his species is called any better than I do, folks. He introduces himself. He’s nervous. To him every human is a celebrity. So in the confusion these New Yorkers think all his people are called Doo. 

“But they like him. They take him to a bar, too. He gets into it. They love it. He’s getting plastered! He starts vibrating. Seriously! He’s got the full case of the jitters, folks. These guys can’t hold their liquor. He didn’t know it. Their culture doesn’t have alcohol.

“I know, right?

“It gets to the point where it seriously feels like there’s more than just our one pal Doo in that bar. He’s shaking so badly the New Yorkers can’t be sure! Maybe that’s all of them, right?

“And then he just passes out. 

“The New Yorkers stare at him. Just lying there, on the floor of the bar. They don’t know what to do. Did they just kill an alien with beer? They’re looking at each other, trying to come up with a story for the cops, or the FBI, or the CIA, or the BEA, since that’s now a thing, the great big beehive itself, when their new pal begins to stir.

“Great! We didn’t kill him after all!

“Much a Doo about nothing!”