Chiste is the Spanish word of brief story or short and funny jokes. Spaniards, both children and adults, love chiste, and some manias open their mouths to show off their chiste and laugh at themselves.

In elementary school, sometimes the homeroom teacher would cancel class to allow the students to take turns performing their chistes. I was extremely shy as a child, and my legs would tremble just standing in front of people, so I felt like a prisoner on death row waiting to be executed during chiste time. Unlike me, the alumni performed chiste with gestures, wondering where they had practiced. We laughed together when the chiste was funny. In Spain, families are tightly knit, and it is customary to gather with grandparents, aunts and uncles for a meal every weekend, so children will probably learn chiste by listening to many chistes performed by adults. Not being in such an environment, I ended up not being able to show my chiste in class until the end.

Many chistes are also available on YouTube. Here is a funny short chiste for children that I recently watched. I know it might be a bit confusing if you don't have a good knowledge of Spanish.

Let's see. This is a joke about the Spanish word nadar, which means to swim, and nada, which means nothing. In Spanish, verbs change according to person. For example, nadar changes as Yo nado (I swim), Tu nadas (You swim), El nada (He swims), so fish B uses the third person. Also, nada means nothing, so in the conversation of the fishes can be recieved in two ways; My dad is swimming and My dad is doing nothing (my father is unemployed!). Hahaha ! It's funny to imagine fishes actually having this conversation.