(No) Joke On The Pier

Jonathan and I were standing on the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles on a cloudy day.  We'd walked all the way out to the end, past the amusement park rides to the fish gut, bait-stained planks and rails where local anglers were casting their lines into the dark green water thirty feet below us.

A homeless guy approached us and asked for a dollar in exchange for a joke.  We agreed and the man told his joke and we gave him his dollar.  It was later when I asked Jonathan what the joke was, ashamed to admit that, as the man reeled it off, I'd been steeling myself for some attack on his part.  I had been so intent on figuring just how high and hard I'd have to hoist the guy to throw him over the railing into the Pacific Ocean that I hadn't heard a word of the joke he was trading for a buck.

So what was the joke exactly?  Jonathan couldn't tell me -- he had been too occupied with how it was he could throw the man over the railing in the event he attacked us.

We're brothers all right.