Sometimes, to the dismay of those around me, whether it’s co-workers or kids or the unsuspecting public, I get “punny” and spout off a quick word-play with a phrase or word that someone has said.
To me, puns are great fun, and help keep people sharp and my mind active when I hear or read something, and I think of a way to tease people with a well-placed pun.
One of those who greet my puns with dismay and/or groans of “Dad-d-d-d!”, or expressions like, “That was awful!” is my daughter Deborah.
On one occasion we had a discussion wherein she was claiming (wrongly, I might add) that there is no such thing as a good pun, and that puns by their very nature are bad.
Naturally, I challenged this notion, and no, not just because I’m stubborn, but for the fact on a couple of occasions I caught her making a pun, and one time she admitted to me she was forming puns in her mind but stopped herself from saying them out loud.
“Aha!” I said (or something like it), as I pointed out the inherent flaw in her logic. “You say they’re bad, and yet you can’t help yourself from making them.”
Like me, Deb is a writer (and unlike me, an artist), so her mind is busy and working all the time, thus the forming of puns in her head came naturally to her as it does to me.
What’s funny is that in spite of the groans and eye-rolling of people in response to my puns, people are inevitably drawn to them, sort of like a motorist going by a crash scene where they just can’t help but look at it.
Sports writers are some of the worst punsters around, liking to slide in puns in their headlines or stories, unabashedly I might add.
The other day I saw a French pun, and I was amazed, because I got it. On a no-name brand of cheese spread, the French label for it called the product “Fromidable!” Basically, it’s a squishing together of the French word for cheese, fromage, and the word for incredible, formidable — c’est funny, n’est-ce pas?
Then a friend sent me a list of puns, listed like one of those posters for babysitters or guitar lessons, and you tear off a phone number — only the tear-off parts were different puns. The title (get ready for this) is, “These are tearable puns.”
An example of one of the puns is, “He often broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.” Another one read, “In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism, it’s your count that votes.” This latter one I sent to Deb on her birthday, and she texted me back saying of my awful pun, “A piece of my soul just died …”
So you see what great fun can be had by playing with words? One last pun: “A backwards poet writes inverse.” (C’mon, you smiled …)
