A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a glass of water. The bartender reaches under the bar and brings out a gun and aims it at the man. The man says thank you and leaves. What happened?
The man had the hiccups and the water helped him stop it, and the gun scared him which also help stop his hiccups as well.
As I was going to St. Ives
I met a man with seven wives
The seven wives had seven sacks
The seven sacks had seven cats
The seven cats had seven kits
Kits, cats, sacks and wives
How many were going to St. Ives?
One person is going to St. Ives (the narrator). Because the narrator "met" all of the others mentioned in the poem, this implies that they walked past each other in opposite directions, and thus none of the wives, sacks, cats, or kits was actually headed to St. Ives.
If you (like many) think this answer is a bit silly, you can assume that all the people, sacks, and animals mentioned were heading for St. Ives. In this case, we would have 1 narrator + 1 man + 7 wives + 49 sacks + 343 cats + 2401 kits = 2802 total going to St. Ives. However, this isn't the traditional answer.
As I was going to the mall I met a man with seven wives. Each wive held two bags, each bag held a mother cat, each mother cat had six babies,
How many people were going to the mall?
In a one storey brown house, there was a brown person with a brown computer, brown telephone, and brown chair. He also had a brown cat and a brown fish – Just about everything was brown – What colour was the stairs?
As it was a one-storey house – there were no stairs.