Trappist monks speak only when it is absolutely necessary. A novice joins an order of Trappist Monks and witnesses a strange activity.
All the monks sit at a table with a pile of numbers on cards in the middle and take it in turns to hold up a card. There would then be various levels of suppressed laughter from the other monks.
'What's this all about?' asked the novice, forgetting he was now in a Trappist Monastery. The abbot held up a huge card with the letters 'SHH!' on it.
Duly admonished, the novice then wrote down his question and handed it to the Abbot. The written answer was that the monks had been together so long that they had heard all the jokes before and so to avoid too much speaking they had devised a system whereby every joke was numbered and so all that was necessary to do was to hold up a number and the rest would know what the joke was.
Being new to all this, the novice thought he might join in. He also began to hold up different numbers. However, the other monks just looked at him, without laughing, and he felt rather bewildered.
Later on he wrote down another question, enquiring why no-one laughed when he held up his numbers while they had laughed when the other monks did. The written reply came to him from the Abbot himself. 'Ah, you see, with a joke, it's the way you tell it!''
