We should have a national joke registry.

How often have you heard or read a really funny joke, probably sent or told to you by a friend or family member? Pretty much every day, right? Sometimes, but not very often, the joke comes from a late-night talk show host, but more often it's totally out of the blue: it just sort of appears
from the great national dialogue about current topics.

So who makes up these jokes?

We all know some that we repeat when we're trying to be funny. I mean, think about it: how many of us actually come up with original jokes ourselves? Not many of us, I'm sure. But do we ever say, when telling one, "Joe Schmoe of Newark made up this joke I'm about to tell you?" Of course not. We have no idea who came up with the joke in the first place.

But, really, jokes have to start somewhere, right? Someone, somewhere, made up each and every joke we repeat to our friends and that end up in joke books. Where do they come from?

In the old days, I suspect it was word of mouth. Some clever person said to a friend, "Do you know why so-and-so never blah blah blahs? Because he . . . [fill in the blanks.]" I'm not trying to quote any particular jokes because I'm terrible at remembering them and also because I think we're dealing with a general principle here: nobody gets credit for the jokes we all love to tell and that make us look funny and smart.

Nowadays we're much more likely to get jokes via email, often sent out to a whole group of people . . . but, again, no one ever says where the joke came from.

Okay, here's one I remember. "What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian?" Answer: "Someone who goes door to door for no apparent reason." Who came up with that? (Substitute Mormon with Unitarian, and you get the same funny result.)

Has no one else ever noticed this strange phenomenon? Do we really think that funny jokes just spring, un-parented, from the atmosphere? Someone is making them up -- but who are they? And why don't they copyright them?

Which brings me back to the idea of a national joke registry. If you think up a good joke and share it with friends and family and co-workers, wouldn't it be a good idea to register it on some kind of web-wide site where you might get credit, if not money (but maybe that, too), every time that joke was told again? Especially if it was told on TV or in print and you could prove that you were, indeed, the originator of that joke? It boggles my mind to think of all the funny stuff out there that goes un-claimed year after year!

Let me give you an example. Garrison Keillor, the host of the popular NPR show "A Prairie Home Companion," and a very good writer and funny man himself, sells a book updated every year of jokes that he's done, or others have done, on his show. And many of them are very funny. But I have yet to see, in any of them I have -- and I have several -- a single writer credited with originating any of the jokes. So where did they come from?

Are jokes, spoken or written down, somehow outside the laws of copyright? If you tell a friend a good joke, or if you send one to a TV or radio show, do you lose all rights to it? Maybe something is working behind the scenes that I'm not aware of, but it seems to me that jokes are perceived as being in the public domain upon creation and utterance. That doesn't seem right.

Why shouldn't you be able to copyright a single joke? Maybe you can, but I'm not aware of it.
Still, it seems reasonable, no? Yet, apparently no one is doing it. Obviously you can't collect a royalty every time someone re-tells your joke, but if someone in the media does, you ought to get something, right?

So -- back to my first bafflement: who makes up these jokes? Who are these anonymous clever people?

I think we need a national registry where anyone who comes up with something really funny can post it and later get credit -- at least recognition -- when it becomes popular. Why should writers of jokes we all love and tell to others receive less credit than the staff writers on silly TV shows, who insist, via their union, on being named and compensated?

Let's call it The National Joke Registry, and let's start submitting our jokes and being recognized and lauded for all the good we do to keep America amused.

The big question, of course, is how do we do it? Who's in charge? I have no idea. But I think it could all be done online. If you come up with a joke that your friends think is funny, log on and register it. Once a database is established, you'll be able to tell if you're the first to tell it and claim ownership. On the other hand, you can Google and find out it someone else came up with the same joke and registered it first. Would some people be ripped off -- their jokes stolen? Of course, but that's the value of registering yours as soon as you think of it.

Back to who's in charge. I would think some entrepreneurial person would set up a website, called something like NationalJokeRegistry.com. He or she could collect royalties every time a joke that is registered is told by David Letterman or whoever. Along with pop-up ad revenue. I'm not someone who will set up such a website, but it's hard to believe that no one else will.

And don't you think it's worth doing? Wouldn't you like to know who made up that joke you told at a recent party that made you look smart and funny? And wouldn't you like credit if YOUR joke goes public?

Last note: I was talking with some friends recently when the issue of the President's opposition to teachers' unions came up, and I said, off the top of my head (so to speak), "How is George W. Bush like a laid-off teacher?" Answer: "No class." This may never make it onto the late-night talk show circuit, but it's mine, and I'd like to register it somewhere.

Hey, it's only fair, right?