What's the best comic remark you ever made that was not laughed at by the people you were with at the time?

This is a question based on a story Meade just told me, about something he said to some other guys when he was in high school. He's remembering: 1. what he said, 2. how funny he thought it was at the time, and 3. that the other guys — 3 boys who were on the wrestling team — reacted with cold silence and, then, departure. And for all these years, Meade has continued to believe that the remark was really funny.

Tell me your stories like that. And feel free to try to figure out Meade's joke.

He was in his art class, working on a painting. The project was to do a painted interpretation of a famous painting, as Picasso did here, painting his version of this Velasquez. The painting he was doing was this Van Gogh of sunflowers. The 3 wrestler boys — one of whom was a friend — had dropped in to hang out in the art room, and they'd been saying things like "Look, it's art boy" and "Meade's a real artiste."