Texting & More Puns

 

          The national news informs me that texting is now so prevalent among our young people that it’s now believed to be as addictive as cigarettes. Whoa! That sounds too much like the end of well-written prose as we once knew it. What can possibly be the attraction to this two-thumbed communication? What will happen to face-to-face conversation? What will happen to writing, not just by professional journalists and novelists but by the general population? Then there’s the problem that schools must have to contend with. What to do about texting during class, during tests? I’m really glad I no longer have to deal with it. I went crazy enough when students chose to ignore my teaching by chatting or staring out a window. But if I were confronted by a classroom of people, heads down, arms and hands in motion, I’d have gone ballistic. My next question is obvious: What in the world do they have to say to each other in their texty shorthand? Are they trying to solve the world’s problems? Discussing the nature of the universe? No. Much more likely, social small talk. Hi, how ya doing? Where are you? What’re you doing? All in the text code they all use. It strikes me as somewhat similar to the time when I was a very young and dumb lad who flashlighted messages at night to my next door neighbor. But I outgrew that at an early age. Let’s hope that texting among our youth will also pass when they discover how truly simplistic it is.

Some puns are punnier than other puns. There was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh . . . no pun in ten did. And Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail, and with this odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. Here another: A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of his office and asked them to disperse. “But why?” one of them asked as they moved off. “Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.

And now, maybe the funniest cat joke I’ve ever seen. Even Garfield would get a chuckle out of this one. An elderly lady called the vet to advise him she had a sick cat. “His eyes are dull and he’s listless, just mopes and sulks all day and he won’t eat,” she said. “I see,” said the vet. “You’d better give him a cup of castor oil and I’ll be out about three this afternoon to have a look at him. You may have trouble giving him the castor oil. With your left hand force his mouth open and pour the castor oil with your right.” The old lady had quite a struggle with the cat but her efforts were highly successful. At three that afternoon the vet knocked on the door and asked, “How’s that sick calf of yours?” “Calf? Why, I have no calf. I called about my sick cat.” “Cat? Did you give it that cup of castor oil? We’ve got to do something about this mighty quick or you’re going to lose your cat! Where is he now?” “I don’t know,” she responded. “Last time I saw him he was taking out across the cornfield with nine other cats.” “What in the world was he doing with nine other cats?” asked the vet. “I don’t know for sure,” she said, “but I think he’s formed some kind of organization. He had three of them digging holes, three of them covering up, and the other three out looking for new locations.”