"Hey, Red, do you want to hear a profane joke?" Matt asked a fellow worker on his California construction crew.

Red looked startled.  "Not from you!" he replied.

Matt was an oddity among the crew members because he never swore.  It puzzled them all, and maybe bothered some, that anyone could be so "pure," as one of them described him.

"Rat," another crew member whose speech and life were unbearably profane, once decided upon a method whereby he could make Matt swear.  "From now on," he told Matt, "I want you to call me *!@?/*@!  If you don't call me that, I won't answer."

That was fine with Matt.  He'd keep referring to the fellow as "Rat," and if Rat didn't answer, Matt would be spared from hearing Rat's offensive speech.

Matt, therefore, kept talking to Rat, Rat ceased speaking to Matt, and their co-workers all began calling Rat *!@?/*@!

A good command of the English language was not a skill possessed by the men on the construction crew.  They were crude, rude, and could not speak without sprinkling each sentence with several swear words.  Each came to respect Matt for his standards and his integrity.  So when Matt asked Red if he wanted to hear a profane joke, Red's answer was "Not from you!"

Matt told the joke anyway.  He asked Red, "What did the fish say when he ran into a cement wall?"

Red shrugged, "I don't know."

"Dam," Matt said.

Red roared with laughter, and immediately went to tell their co-workers the joke.

"You've got to hear the profound joke Matt just told," Red said to them.

"That's profane," Matt shouted in correction.

"Whatever," Red replied, and proceeded to tell the joke.

The joke enjoyed a long life with the crew, and grew funnier the drunker they got in the evenings.  It was all the funnier because Matt, of all people, had told a "profound" joke.

Matt laughed too, but was mostly laughing at his companions' inabilities to understand English, and to express themselves in their native tongue.

Rat once told Matt about the death of his father.  "We had him cremated," Rat said, "and we put his ashes in a urinal."

"A urinal!?" Matt exclaimed.

"Yeah, you know, a little square box with a lid on it."

"You mean an urn."

"Whatever."