Just taught my kids about taxes by eating 38% of their ice cream.

A characteristically deadpan Conan O’Brien joke that turns a civic abstraction—taxation—into a concrete, child-sized lesson. By “teaching” taxes through confiscating 38% of his kids’ ice cream, the line satirizes how taxes can feel like an arbitrary reduction of one’s rewards, especially to those who don’t see the public benefits behind them. The specificity of “38%” mimics real-world marginal tax rates and adds mock-precision, heightening the humor. The joke also plays on parental authority as a stand-in for government power, inviting readers to laugh at the mismatch between the seriousness of fiscal policy and the petty, immediate sting of losing dessert.