[These were supposed to post last Friday, but due to computer (user) error, they stayed as a draft and were never published. But don’t worry… I’ve rescued them from oblivion.] Continuing to document some of our family’s heritage of jokes, there’s a category that I have to hit on: Aggie jokes. Aggie jokes are a Texas tradition, told at the expense of students of Texas A&M University.

My dad was a passionate Longhorn fan (that’s the University of Texas, should anyone have to ask). When my parents met, they were both school teachers in Seminole, Texas. One evening, my mom had some people, including my dad, over to her house. They were standing around the piano, singing as she played. Someone asked my mom to play the Aggie fight song (or “Coney Island Baby,” I can’t remember which — the tune is the same). When she began to play, my dad left.

Later in life, one of his good friends at church was Ed Huston, a rabid A&M fan. They enjoyed exchanging barbs, and Ed would grin and bear it as my dad told Aggie jokes.

Growing up, all I knew about Aggies was that they were the object of jokes like these:

Did you hear that the A&M cafeteria stopped serving ice? They lost the recipe.

Tragedy struck the A&M campus: the library burned down, burning up all 3 books. And one of them hadn’t been colored in yet.

Did you hear that a tornado struck the A&M campus? It did a million dollars worth of improvements.

Did you hear about the Aggie that thought Johnny Cash was a pay toilet?

The Southwest Conference (hey, I learned these jokes as a kid) was having a science contest sponsored by NASA. The best project would receive full government funding. Texas Tech University presented an amazing project with manned flight to Mars. The University of Texas had an elaborate plan to establish a colony on the moon. The A&M team revealed their dream of flying to the sun. The NASA officials said, “Boys, don’t you realize that the sun is so hot you’d never get within a million miles of it?” One of the Aggies replied, “Hey, no problem. We’re going at night.”

Are you being to see how I became the warped person that I am?