a traveling salesman arrives at a city, he hears someone saying "214" and suddenly everyone starts laughing out loud. He found that very strange, but walked a little more, hears someone saying "73" and, again, everyone is laughing! He then asks a man what is happening in this city, that when someone says a number, everyone laughs. Man says they are the numbers of anecdotes, to avoid losing time to count them because they are long, the person says the number of the joke and everyone laughs. The traveling salesman, who then have been preparing for a very important conference that night, goes to the hotel room and decorates the book of jokes to break the ice while in the conference. The night comes and he begins to say "212" to his partners ... "60!", he shouts. Everyone laughs but in a very restrained way, like they weren't finding the anecdotes very funny ... The traveler finds that strange and will ask the same man what was going on, that no-one was enjoying his jokes. The man then said "oh, you see ... you really don't tell jokes that very good" Is this joke purely non-sense or there is something to understand?
