I don't get no respect. When I played in the sandbox the cat kept covering me up.

This line belongs to Rodney Dangerfield’s signature “I don’t get no respect” persona, a self-deprecating comic character he honed in nightclub stand-up and later brought to television and recordings in the 1970s and early 1980s. The joke uses a childhood sandbox image and a cat’s instinct to bury waste to exaggerate how thoroughly the speaker is disregarded—treated not merely as unimportant but as something to be covered up. It reflects Dangerfield’s broader routine style: rapid one-liners built on humiliation, social rejection, and domestic or everyday indignities, delivered in a deadpan, aggrieved voice that made the character instantly recognizable.

The humor comes from escalating “no respect” into an absurdly literal metaphor: even in the sandbox—supposedly a child’s safe, playful space—the speaker is treated like refuse. The cat’s behavior implies the speaker’s presence is not only unwanted but embarrassing or contaminating, a comic overstatement that turns social slight into physical erasure. As with much of Dangerfield’s work, the joke invites laughter through identification with insecurity and rejection, while the extremity of the image keeps it safely in the realm of farce. The line also showcases his knack for compressing a full narrative of humiliation into a single, punchy comparison.