Don't tell middle schoolers jokes, especially a Stephen Wright one

I taught a class on Langston Hughes "The ballad of the Landlord", a couple weeks ago to a middle school class. I thought the lesson was a hit, a good way to introduce them to the ballad form with 4-3-4-3 meter and ababc rhyme. In order to win over students, or at least make them think I'm a total nerd, I will tell them a joke, which usually High School student's who are more interested in Twilight or "Too Cool for School", will stare at me blankly will their white Edward adoring faces, like i came some uncool planet trying to amuse them and they are on to my game. But I forgot, this is middle school! Where your either hiding in a corner with with your hands covering your pubescent face that just broke out or throwing paper and have not fully learned the potential for the word 'cool'.... So I told them a little about myself, and then i did a name game. Why? Because i really wanted to test out a joke that i knew they would think I was a total nerd from. So i asked them their name and if they could be an animal and why....yada yada ya.. they actually like it. So i told them( a total lie) that I asked a student once what he wanted to be and he said a bird, and i said so you could fly and he said no so i could poop white(obviously couldn't say 'shit). Man was it a hit, they laughed, asked me about my fictional student, was so amused by his cleverness, and grateful I told them something so funny. They participated in all of my lesson, even tried a choral reading of the poem...so i left feeling pretty good. Then this last weekend roles around. i had just worked an overnight but I volunteer for an organization called Community to Community taking middle schoolers mostly spanish speaking out into the community and general mentoring tasks. We took them ice cream, i forgot that one of my student was in that class, because he rarely shows up for our events with mentoring. oh he told everyone about my fictional student, but he got smart and they replaced 'poop' with shit. Then the parents arrived, and he wanted me to tell his whole family, his mom and my cousins about my student who wanted to shit 'white'. Then his mom looked at me and said 'oh i heard about it'. Lesson learned only tell jokes to highschoolers, because you will only amuse yourself. Middle School, they will take them and run, granted they think it is a true story