"Injured Egg" Caption Contest Commentary with Lawrence Wood

This month’s contest featured a cartoon by the legendary Mick Stevens, whose work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1979. It’s also featured on the cover of my book, which I’m hoping you’ll buy:

In Stevens’ cartoon, two anthropomorphic and identically dressed eggs are standing in front of a high brick wall. One of them has been badly injured—he’s using a crutch and is covered in bandages—and he’s saying something to the other egg.

Stevens, a connoisseur of cartoon tropes, is alluding to one of the most common: Humpty Dumpty. If you enter that search term on the CartoonStock website, you’ll find ninety-five pages of results, and a Humpty-Dumpty drawing by Mort Gerberg appeared in The New Yorker’s caption contest (No. 715):

The winning captions

These captions are chosen by The New Yorker.

“And then I find out all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are out-of-network.”
“It’s never over easy.”
“No, actually I fell off the wagon.”

While judging this month’s contest, we tried not select any entries that were similar to those three finalists.

Mick Steven’s original caption was, “I’ve pretty much had it with walls.”

This month’s entries fell into two broad categories: (1) those that alluded to the nursery rhyme, and (2) those that came at the drawing from a completely different angle.

First Category

These two entries alluded to other nursery rhyme characters:

“I saw Jack and Jill at the ER.”
“Don’t tell Mother.”

The next two refer to Humpty’s “great fall:”

“I wouldn’t describe it as ‘great.’”
“I wouldn’t call it great.”

Those nearly identical versions of the same joke highlight the importance of choosing your words carefully, and “call it” is far superior to “describe it as.”

This next entry, which alludes to a philosophical question that Plutarch posed in his essay “The Symposiacs,” would be much better if it made no reference to the wall and went with just the second half of the joke: “Fall off a wall? No, I tried to settle an old argument with a chicken.” Never try to cram two jokes into one caption.

The following caption suggests that the egg who’s speaking has come back from the future to save his younger self: “I built a time machine. Stay off the wall.”

The next three entries explain why the egg fell:

“I was pushed.”
“My phone was on vibrate.”
“I forgive you, Bumpty.”

That third entry, which I initially dismissed as a stupid pun, is actually terrific, as it creates an entire story. It suggests that both eggs were on the wall together, and that the one who didn’t fall accidentally knocked the other one off because he is, as his name suggests, constantly bumping into things.

Here’s a pun I wanted to dismiss as stupid but is really not that bad: “Then, my insurance dropped me.”

These next two captions refer to the king’s horses that tried to help Humpty after his fall but only made matters worse.

“I wake up and some horse is giving me mouth-to-mouth.”
“I’ll never understand why he sends the horses.”

This entry suggests that the injured egg is not Humpty Dumpty, but is instead his unintentional victim: “I’m the poor bastard he landed on.”

These two captions explain why Humpty climbed the wall:

“The ascent was spectacular.”
“The view isn’t worth it.”

And, while I didn’t expect to see a nursery-rhyme related sex joke, we got one: “Well, it sure ain’t from humpin’.”

Second Category

Since I ended that last section with a sex joke, I’ll start this section with another, which doubles as one of the month’s better puns: “At least I got laid before I cracked.”

Here’s another pun I’ve decided somewhat reluctantly to highlight: “They caught me poaching.”

Some of you may argue that this next caption is also a pun, but it’s actually an example of transforming an ordinary statement into a fitting caption: “You always look so put together.”

Here’s an unexpected and pretty clever joke about race discrimination: “There wouldn’t have been so much attention if I were a brown egg.”

And here’s this month’s second joke that alludes to Plutarch’s philosophical question and suggests that the egg sustained his injuries during a fight as opposed to a fall: “I should have let the chicken go first.”

As someone who spent a few years in high school and college bagging groceries (first at P&C Foods in Manlius, New York, and then at the Food Buoy in Woods Hole, Massachusetts), I loved this caption: “I can’t believe that asshole put me at the bottom of the grocery bag.” That’s probably too vulgar for The New Yorker’s caption contest, but our sensibilities are not so delicate. Also, the joke wouldn’t land as well without the word “asshole.”

This caption is good but too long: “Maybe an egg isn’t the best body type for parkour.” It would work better without such a detailed explanation. I’d suggest something closer to Mick Sterven’s original caption—something like, “I’ve had it with parkour.”

This caption suggests that, while the injured egg was at the hospital, he received some more bad news: “On top of everything, I also tested positive for salmonella.”

Finally, here’s an entry that suggests the eggs are working on a movie: “Do your own stunts.”

Congratulations to ZACK WINDHEIM, who won this month’s contest with, “I forgive you, Bumpty.”

The five runners-up are: