This is something you're lucky enough to witness once in a lifetime, but it happened to me this morning.

I hit the standard elevator joke trifecta, in which all three of your standard, prototypical elevator jokes are told in all sincerity by three different people all in one elevator ride. Books have been written about it. Major motion pictures have been crafted around it. Lives have been ended, babies conceived -- all over the standard elevator joke trifecta.

And, yes, I hit it this morning.

So, there I am, shit still crusted in my eyes, body still in sleep mode as I walk into work. The elevator doors open on the ground floor and I walk right in, followed by two women talking to one another about a friend whose kid is in trouble with the law or gave a dog a venereal disease or something. Doors close and we go up one floor to the third (I don't know why the second floor here is called the third), home to our building's greasy-ass cafeteria (I don't know why the cafeteria is on the third [second] floor, either).

Doors open. In struts a dude with a moustache and a shirt that's waaaay too unbuttoned, exposing gold chains that are waaaay too shiny. The ladies, engrossed in their conversation, somehow don't notice him -- until he launches into:

STANDARD ELEVATOR JOKE #1:
"Heeeeey! We gotta stop meeting like this!"

BWAAAA HAHAHAHAHA! That one KILLS!

The first woman, who bears a striking resemblance to the half-chicken, half-human lady from The State, is obviously right on point today, because she notices the plate of greasy-ass cafeteria breakfast sitting on styrofoam and swaddled in Saran Wrap in the guy's hand. The image...remninds her of something, though she doesn't know quite what. Then it hits her...

STANDARD ELEVATOR JOKE #2:
"You mean you didn't get any for me?"

WOOOOO HOOHOOHOOHOO! Score one for chicken lady!

Everyone's laughing so hard right now that their Depends are working overtime. They're hitting each other on the back so hard I'm sure one of 'em's gonna fly through the wall pro-wrestling style.

Even so, just by looking in her eyes, you can tell the second woman has a dilemma: Does she risk killing the mood by telling another joke and watching it fall flat? Does she let the gales keep going, even though she'd regret not taking the chance to test her edgy comedic genius for the rest of her life? Does she take the risk, shooting for glory? Does she settle once again for second best?

I think we all know what she does. After a moment of consideration, she reaches into her mental joke bag and grabs...

STANDARD ELEVATOR JOKE #3:
"Well, maybe next time we'll get to take the express elevator up!"

HEEEEE HAWHAWHAWHAW! See, it's funny because we don't have an express elevator! They're all painfully slow!

I don't need to tell you, joke three sealed the trifecta, building up and boiling over the laughter so much that I thought the elevator was gonna burst. They all got off on the tenth floor, leaving me in a good mood for the day of staring out the window on my company's dime I had in front of me.