Original artwork, not a still
Anonymous folk joke (earliest found: Usenet, 1993); often misattributed to Jack Handey
I want to die in my sleep peacefully like my grandfather, not screaming and in terror like his passengers.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The joke works on a swerve: the sweet wish for a gentle death turns out to be about a grandfather who fell asleep at the wheel, and his passengers did not go quietly. It travelled the internet for thirty years under borrowed names, and Jack Handey is one of them. That shows how Deep Thoughts became the label people attach to any deadpan one-liner.
Context reviewed
In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
This is a folk joke with no known author, not a Deep Thought. Its earliest dated appearance found by quote researcher Barry Popik is a post to the Usenet newsgroup info.sun-managers on 31 August 1993, credited to "Unknown". It then spread through newsgroups later that year and in 1994, reached the Washington Post in June 1995 as a notice on a saloon wall in Joel Achenbach's column, and began turning up in joke books and newspaper humour columns in 1996 and 1997. Credit has been pinned on Will Rogers, Emo Philips and Wil Shriner, but Rogers never said it and no source ties the joke to Jack Handey.
Sources (1)
- Barry Popik: My grandfather died peacefully in his sleep, not like his passengersWhole entry, dated citations listReference checked
Context reviewed
