Flucky

My friend Nancy passes on a good-natured dumb joke which, in the grand tradition of academic criticism, I will now undertake to make tedious and boring. Anyway, it's the one about the old guy who comes home about three hours late for dinner. His wife asks: where have you been?

--I had an accident.
--Oy, did you go to a doctor?
--I went to the doctor.
--Nu, vos zogt der doktor?
--Der doktor zogt az ich hob a flucky.

A flucky.

--Nu, what do you do for a flucky?
--I don't know. I forgot to ask.

A flucky. Oy gevalt. She runs to the neighbors'

--What do you do for a flucky?
--In the old country, when someone had a flucky, we always applied cold. Ice cold is the best thing for a flucky.
--What are you talking about? Cold is absolutely the worst thing you could do for a flucky! We always applied heat, that's the only thing to do for a flucky.

Cold, heat, oy! Now she is upset.  She decides to call on the doctor herself.

--Doctor, please tell me, what's wrong with my husband?
--I told him...nothing's wrong.

  [wait for it]

--He got off lucky!

Hey, I never said it was a good joke. But. But forget they oys and the gevalts and the counterfeit Yiddish. Is this not the most situation-specific joke you can possibly imagine? I mean, I can just hear (although I was never did hear) some guy in a Yiddish theatre on Second Avenue in, say, 1912, belting it out to an ecstatic house full of newbies on the edge of a new language and a new culture. You've got the awe and timidity  in the presence of medical knowledge; the the wry nostalgia, the instinct for self-protection. You can hear the know-it-all neighbors; the distraction and impatience of the doctor and perhaps best, the attention and assertiveness of the wife. I'll say he got a flucky.  And so do we.  Thanks, Nancy.