Quasimodo, the bell-ringer for the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, goes to the cardinal. “Cardinal, I’m getting pretty old and I’d like to retire, and live the rest of my life peacefully.” The cardinal says, “That’s fine Quasi, we’ll just let the town crier know so he can put out the call to find a new bell-ringer.” The cardinal does this, and both he and Quasimodo hear the town crier announcing the job opening.
After about three weeks, they are shocked because they haven’t had anyone come for the job opening. The cardinal and Quasimodo are down on the steps talking, “Quasi,” said the cardinal, “I’m sorry to say this but I can’t let you go retire. We don’t have anyone to ring the bells if you go. We’ll keep the job offer open to anyone, but no one seems to want to do it.” As he was speaking, an armless man runs up, and out of breath says, “I’m — here about — the bell — ringing job. Is it still — available?” The cardinal looks to Quasimodo and says, “Hey, it’s your choice to try him out.” Quasimodo nods his shoulders and leads the man up to the bell tower.
As they arrive on the platform, Quasimodo explains to the man how the job works. “Well, you take this large rope here and pull on it really hard, which moves the bell, causing the clapper inside the bell to hit the sides and make it ring. As you can well guess, we pull the rope once for each hour. It’s almost three ‘o’ clock now, so I’ll ring the bell the first time, and you have to ring it the second time.” He looks out the window, watches the sun for a moment, then goes over and pulls the bell rope. *CLANG* the bell rings. “Ok, you’re turn.”
The armless man goes over to the rope and tries to get a good pull on it by grabbing it with his shoulder and head, pulling it with his teeth, stepping on the rope all to no avail. “Come on man, it was only 1 ‘o’ clock two hours ago, we gotta get this bell rung.” The man, obviously flustered, looks around. He then takes about ten steps away from the bell and leans forward. Then, as fast as his legs can carry him, he charges at the bell. *CLANG* the bell rings from the man’s head hitting the bell. Quasimodo cringes as the man stumbles around for a moment. “Sorry to have to say this, but you have to ring that bell one more time,” says Quasimodo. The man stumbles around for another moment and then steps back, and runs at the bell again. *CLANG* the bell goes off again. Right as Quasimodo is about to tell the guy “Good Job”, the man, still dazed, stumbles around and falls out the window, all the way to the steps of the cathedral below, dying instantly.
The cardinal runs out to the man’s joke, turns around and looks at the window the man fell from, and Quasimodo is now leaning out of. “Quasimodo, get your ass down here NOW!” he yells. Quasimodo runs down to the front of the cathedral, and in front of the enraged cardinal. “Quasi, I thought we fixed the problem we had before and you promised you weren’t going to throw people from the bell tower. What the hell happened?!?” Quasimodo explains the story to him. The cardinal then says, “Well, we should let his family know about this. Did he tell you his name, where he lived, anything?”
Quasimodo answers him, “No, we never even mentioned his name or where he was from. I don’t know anything about him, but his face sure rings a bell.”
Bell-Ringer
in Jokes