Why Did the Cheese Cross the Road?

How many 'wheys' can cheese make us laugh? A favorite food around the world, makers of cheese must have learned long ago that their work had a comedic life of its own! This is nowhere more evident than when you unite cheese with word play. For, in addition to being a marvelous product shared by cheeseheads seemingly everywhere, an increasingly valuable by-product of cheese making is whey. Indeed, when you combine cheesey cheese jokes with other word play and mix in some cheesey geography – as I do here to illustrate cheese's international scope – you find that you soon have a chapter on 'whey' itself (not to mention its cousins in the name of cheese humor, 'way' and 'weigh'). So as I serve up the funny side of cheese here, don't simply "say cheese." Rather, please remember to let yourself laugh - and laugh lots because one good cheese joke deserves another!