Funny is...

Year after year my in-class allusions (to literature, film, television Seinfeld) become increasingly unfamiliar to my audience students. I try to keep up with the times, with the fresh, but they need to meet me halfway. I soon might replace summer reading assignments with exercises in developing some common reference points.

Case in point: There's a caption contest on the back page of each issue of The New Yorker. The magazine prints a caption-less cartoon; readers submit captions. The mag prints the top three submissions...and the readers vote. Most winning captions are not very funny. A recent submission, however, made me laugh out loud. I found it so amusing, I wondered if others would (compared to the other two entries) find it the funniest. I wondered if my students would. They did not. So I'm asking you. Read the cartoon below, and then tell me which caption is the funniest.



a. "Come sweater season, you'll be back."

b. "You're the one who left your fertility drugs on the counter."

c. "Could you bring me back a goat?"