Punning for your Life

“For my next trick...” thought the three year old grand-darling, “I’ll single-handedly wrap three adoring adults around my little pinky finger, by saying something so disarmingly cute, yet still in keeping with the genetic imprint of obligatory punning that they’ll know they are MINE... and I am theirs!”

And so she did... with this line: “Gran’Pun and Gra’Moose, I really like being here with you in this ‘Ja-COZY.’”

“TA-DAAA!!”

(Sounds of one mother and two grand-parental-units melting and slooshing down the drain of the hot-tub.) 

“My dada has a JaCozy too,” she reminds us, “only his is smaller.”

Which leads me to remember the pun-run between mother (who reported this to me) and daughter while riding in the car... 

D: “Mama, I like this lollipop!”

M: “If it was doggy flavored, it could be a ‘lolli-pup!’”

D: “And if it was DaDa flavored, it could be a ‘lolli-papa!’”

OY! My cheeks are hurting from smiling too much. I hear my mother-in-law, (may she rest in peace), saying, “Oy! I LOVE it!” I see her biting the heel of her own hand because we won’t let her bite our children’s tuschies. Were she alive today, we’d have to hide her amazing great-grand daughter D, so Freidabel, affectionatley known as ‘Mama Freddy’ or ‘GranMa Frimmit’, wouldn’t bite D’s perfect tuschie!

Our list of ancestral PUN-tificators is long. My step-dad asked, "What kind of a nut is this?" 

"Cashew." 

"Gesundheidt!"

At just two, our younger daughter took her thumb out of her mouth long enough to hold her father’s earlobe and tell him, “Daddy, you’re EAR-resistable.”

Of course, her father’s name at camp is “Pun” and he gave me my nick name, “Moose”, because I’m too big to call ‘deer.’

Most often our family’s humor is used to fortify the bonds - that feeling of belonging and having something in common. It’s an easy opener when we’ve been parted from one another’s company for a long time. It’s a way of picking-up where we left off. Sometimes, under stress, our humor is an attempt to stay just a half-step ahead of despair or other yucky feelings. 

Laughter is a very high-toned emotional discharge. It’s very warm. For me it’s easier to laugh than to get angry. I laugh a lot... and discharge the heat quickly, instead of doing a slow burn.

Hearing things out of the corner of my ear, sometimes makes for some comical interpretations of reality. I may have written in a previous blog of my mistaking what my older daughter said to me in a phone conversation earlier this year - just before my husband’s birthday. I knew he wanted some special trousers and she had seen them at a store. When she called, I was cooking and had the phone cradled on my shoulder. What I heard her say was, “Mom there’s BKACK BEANS with PESTO.”

“Oh, sounds good... where, dear?” was my distracted reply.

“What?”

“Where do they have Black Beans with Pesto,” I asked.

I had to hold the phone away from my ear because her laughter was ear drum splitingly loud.

“No, mom... They have black JEANS at COSTCO!!”

It’s all good. We miss the children when they’re out of sight, cherish every moment we have with them and savor the sweet memories of visits past.

May you savor every moment of this Labor Day and the entire month of September. 

Enjoy the Equinox... On September 22, try balancing a raw egg (in the shell) on its end. S’posed to be able to do that at both vernal and autumnal equinoxes... when the days are EGG-zactly as long as the nights...