[sandreas]

This reminds me of Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear... seems that his dad told him a similar story :-)

> “Once upon a time,” I began. “There was a little boy born in a little town. He was perfect, or so his mother thought. But one thing was different about him. He had a gold screw in his belly button. Just the head of it peeping out.

[anonporridge]

The joke goes back to at least 1971 based on it's appearance in a book of Isaac Asimov's favorite jokes, https://old.reddit.com/r/KingkillerChronicle/comments/3uul26.... I'm sure it's much older. My father also told a version of it back in the 80s.

Screws and screwdrivers are at least 500 years old, so this joke could have been mutating around its core punchline through generations for quite a long time before it was first written down.

[ecornflak]

My Dad was an avid sci fi reader, I feel this is probably where he borrowed from :)