2014-08-03
Explanation
The Joke
A child asks his father if he can ask a "weird question." The son wants to know about a phase where the family had financial difficulties — they couldn't afford a bigger house, so the son had to sleep in the parents' bed. He asks, "What was up with that?" implying the parents' sex life must have been affected.
The father responds that their "total sex remained constant" and explains the distinction between sex frequency and sex randomness. He claims that while frequency went down, randomness went up, so the total sex "remained constant." The father then lists increasingly awkward examples of where he and the mother had sex because the bed was occupied — "that time it was just you and me in the car" and the boy found his parents' handcuffs under the bed, and their submarines "went missing one by one."
Each time the father claims "total sex remains constant," treating it like a law of physics (conservation of sex), while the child grows increasingly disturbed.
The Humor
The comedy works on multiple levels. First, there is the absurdity of a father treating his sex life as a physics equation, invoking a fake "conservation law" as though sexual activity is a conserved quantity like energy or momentum. The joke plays on the mathematical/scientific framing of something deeply personal and inappropriate to discuss with one's child.
Second, the escalating awkwardness is a classic comedic structure — each new revelation is more disturbing than the last, yet the father remains obliviously matter-of-fact. The child clearly regrets asking the "weird question."
Third, the punchline about submarines going "missing one by one" is wonderfully bizarre and unexplained, leaving the reader to imagine what on earth that means.
References
The "total sex remains constant" formulation parodies conservation laws in physics, such as the conservation of energy or conservation of momentum, which state that certain quantities in a closed system remain unchanged over time.