What is your favorite longstanding joke you have with someone?

When I was but a young lad, I packed my belongings (along with my new wife) and moved all the way across the country to 29 Palms, California. A more desolate place you will never find. After driving all the way across country in a Toyota 5-speed we arrived at the only traffic light in town and my new bride cried. Within mere hours we had found what passed as suitable quarters. The next day we made our first shopping trip to the commisary. Kristie had made an extensive list of household items we would need and we wondered the aisle aimlessly in search of needed items. As we entered the pet food section Kristie had her head down in her list and I asked a simple question; 'Do we need cat food?'.

When my husband was a small child, there was a tree that banged against the house during storms. His father told him that the noise was made by "killer, man-eating rabbits" living in the attic. He became terrified of the idea of bunnies, but none of the adults in the family realized to what extent. Later that summer, they were on a canoe trip and his older brother announced they were approaching the "rapids." He went into hysterics and tried to walk on water out of that canoe to run away from the "rabbits."

Sitting on a plane, the flight attendant asks, "something to drink?"  My neighbor orders coffee and continues to bend my ear as he conducts his chemistry experiment-like preparation of his airline coffee - to get it just so.  One pack of sugar, two packs of sugar, three packs of sugar, FOUR?  No way, not really.  Yup.  Four, five!  It's a little cup.

Me:  "Yum, Yum"

We both crack up.

Growing up in the Bible Belt of Alabama and Georgia, one of the things that I dreaded most was having to endure relentless evangelizing from my neighbors, classmates, coworkers, or just people who saw me on the street. I had a carefully selected group of friends who sympathized with my dread, having similarly suffered (non-Christians were bad, Hell-bound people in the evangelical Baptist mind).