I'm so old that when I order a three-minute egg they make me pay up front.

This line is a one-liner from Henny Youngman’s nightclub and television-era stand-up repertoire, built on the mid‑20th‑century American diner commonplace of ordering eggs “soft-boiled” by the minute. Youngman frequently performed rapid-fire jokes about aging, marriage, and everyday transactions, and this gag fits his persona of the wisecracking older man whose life is measured in small indignities. The humor depends on a familiar service custom—paying “up front”—reframed as a response to his extreme age, as if the restaurant doubts he’ll still be around when the egg is ready.

Youngman’s one-liner uses a mundane detail—ordering a “three-minute egg”—to set up an absurd exaggeration about age. The joke hinges on the implication that he is so old (and therefore so close to death) that even a tiny wait time is a credit risk: the restaurant wants payment before the egg is done. It’s a classic example of his rapid-fire, self-deprecating style, where aging becomes a comic persona rather than a lament. The line also plays on everyday commercial trust (paying after service) and flips it, turning mortality into a punchline about customer reliability.