The Unexpected Pun

By Wendy Anne Darling | January 26, 2016

THE UNEXPECTED PUN

My ex-husband never understood my love of puns. To him, they were ‘constructs.’ Put together purposefully and, therefore, not funny. He liked to tell me that HE laughed at real-life, funny incidents.

Well – Mike could laugh at mathematical equations.

Mike went to OXFORD…

‘Nuff said.

What he never understood about me was how I could dissolve into a kind of hysterical seizure over wordplay; how the perfect pun could cause me to writhe on the floor and then hiccup for hours; sometimes weeks.

Anybody remember Verse and Worse?

I loved that book, and its successors, and could giggle over it for hours. To me, forcing my ex to listen to me hiccuping and snorting my way through the bits I found the funniest was a divine kind of torture. The confused expression on his face added a whole new level of hilarity for me.

Alright, alright. So I HAVE done some things in my life that I am not overly proud of.

The puns I especially loved were the unexpected puns; the ones that took me by surprise. But, strangely enough, the pun I still giggle at is one that I read with a confused expression and didn’t get for weeks.

Until, one day, it just hit me between the eyes.

NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE A BIRD WITHOUT A BEAK.