"You see, you see?" squealed Darby, "going after a fellow's mother—"
* * * * * * * * * *
How far back do "Your mom!" jokes go? Is Oedipus a really elaborate "Your mom!" joke? It may be an easy and unimaginative joke to simply reply "Your mom!" to some statement but I have to admit that it probably makes me laugh at least 40 percent of the time. I was never smart enough to think up or ambitious enough to remember or memorize really good your mom insults (although maybe I should commit Lindsay's to memory from the previous line. It's a knockout!). For some reason, most of those revolved around a person's mother being fat. I only had one friend whose mother was obese and I would never have said to him, "Your mother is so fat that when she wears a red dress, people yell, 'Hey, Kool-Aid!'" I would have been more apt to say, "How's your mom, Ron? I hope she's doing well?"
Anyway, I liked all my friends' moms! Why would I want to insult them when I could just call my friend a dumb ugly bastard?!
What's great about this whole bit is simply how Pynchon acknowledges how some things never really change.
Do girls have "Your Dad!" jokes? Or does every young person just seem to agree that insulting your mother is terrible because they love their mothers while insulting their dad barely registers because he never shows his love anyway?
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