Once a Pun a Time

How many of you can recall the first pun you ever heard and appreciated? You'll argue that I could not possibly remember such an insignificant and bygone incident, but whether it was actually the first or not, I nevertheless recall the day an uncle amused me with this riddle:

      Q.   Why do Eskimos wash in Tide?

      A.   Because it's too cold to wash out-Tide.

That awakened in me a penchant for wordplay that by high school must have been torturous to bear. During an anatomy lesson in biology I would distract my classmates by holding up signs reading "Liver Alone" or "Aorta Know Better." Dick Cavett was my idol and he could toss off a play on words without missing a beat. Incessant punning doesn't win the girl or make you the most popular; but it's a habit that's hard to break.

In our household today, it's Justin who shows signs of becoming quite the punster. He's always had a great sense of humor; even he recognizes it, selecting, for example, a jester's costume for himself at Halloween three years ago. It was probably about that same age when one night during story time after there was an unmistakable sound from his brother's bed that he quipped, "Andrew, what do you think this is? A gas station?"

Justin continues to surprise and amuse me with his wordplay, now occasionally striving for the multi-lingual:

Before one meal he raised his glass and said, "Bon appe-drink!"

Giving me a hug at bedtime he once said, "Sleep de resistance."

Watching the playoffs he announced, "I call him Derek Cheater."

Like most anyone else, I have difficulty remembering jokes and I've certainly forgotten several books' worth of bad puns. But a few favorite, albeit no longer contextually interesting, groaners still linger:

I envied the writer of the one paragraph review of the movie, Mommy Dearest, who chose the caption, "Old actresses never die; they're just Faye Dunaway."

I once took a film course and had to suffer through back-to-back viewings of "Pierrot le Fou" by Jean-Luc Godard and "Lola Montes" by Max Ophuls. Afterwards, my single line film journal entry read simply, "Two of the most Godard-Ophul films I've ever seen."

And one of my all time favorites, from "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," is the sign that one of the Merry Pranksters posted on a winding road through the hills of La Honda to help revelers locate Ken Kesey's ranch for an LSD party:

No Left Turn Unstoned