Eric, I thought that by now you've prepared that form message, no? 
Maybe I'll just refer to it as Form Msg #372.5.
A lone traveller was lost in the mountains. Cold, wet and hungry, he chanced upon an isolated monastery. He was warmly welcomed, given a room, a hot bath and a change of clothes and invited to join the monks at dinner.
After a good, simple meal, he was surprised when one of the monks stood up, said "72" and sat down, to a gale of laughter. A while later, another of the company repeated the exercise, saying "26" and receiving the same response.
He asked his neighbour what was going on. "We're a closed community. We've all been here for years. We have very no contact with the outside world. We have got to know each others' jokes really well, so to save time we have numbered them. All one of us has to do is to say the number: we can all think of the joke and enjoy it."
The traveller asks if he can join in, and is told that of course he can. He gets to his feet, thinks for a moment and says "127".
There are two punchlines.
The room dissolves into uncontrollable hysterics because "we've never heard that one before".
or
There is a deathly silence because "you told it very badly".
I once worked for a consultant who had a number of pet dislikes (of routine practices, of course, such as giving blood to an anaemic patient). I suggested he could number them, so when on a ward round we came across one of the hates, he could give the number and we could all nod sagely and move on, saving a few minutes at each bedside. He didn't warm to the idea, oddly.
Jeremy
