First Utterance Puns

After dying in a fatal car crash, 3 nuns end up at the pearly gates and the saint there tells them "Since you're so pure of heart and free of sin you can all go into the Kingdom of Heaven if you answer 3 questions. I'm going to ask you one question each."

The saint turns to the first nun and asks: "Who were the first two humans God created?"

She says: "Adam and Eve!"

She gets into Heaven.

The saint turns to the second nun and asks: "What was the one thing Adam and Eve were told not to do in the Garden of Eden?"

She says: "They weren't allowed to eat the fruit of knowledge!"

She gets into Heaven.

The saint turns to the last nun - the mother superior - and says "Since you're the mother superior my last question is going to be difficult to answer, but if you answer correctly you can get into Heaven. So my question for you is: What was the first thing Eve said to Adam when they realized they were naked?"

Now she has to think a little and as she thinks she's close to conceding, uttering "Gee, that's a hard one..."

The saint lets her right into Heaven.

The End.

All four walls of the room are made of hollow cinder block, but three of the four walls are reinforced with rebar and cement filling rendering them unbreakable.

Utterly confused, the rhinoceros studies the room for a moment and then tries ramming into the first wall to get itself free, but is stunned to find that it won't budge because it is reinforced and completely solid.

The rhinoceros shakes it off and tries ramming the second wall to knock it down, but only managed to break off a few small crumbs because it, too, is reinforced.

In a total daze, the rhinoceros tries ramming the third wall, but then falls over unconscious from trying to ram yet another reinforced wall.

After a few minutes, the rhinoceros regains consciousness and slowly pulls to its feet. Both exhausted and completely unable to withstand ramming another reinforced wall, the poor rhinoceros sinks its head in failure and has all but given up hope.

...but then, with a sudden stroke of genius, the rhinoceros stands on it's hind legs, clears its throat, and asks you, the reader,

"Should I try breaking the fourth wall?"

OK... so did you ever notice how every time you spend 4 days alone in the woods and you make it out without a scratch or even a mosquito bite, and you're feeling all peaceful and relaxed and at one with the universe, you're not home 20 minutes and unloading the back of your truck when you slam your right shin into the trailer hitch... and amid the flashing white stars around you, your fists clench, your teeth grit, your body tenses and every "mean, nasty and ugly" word you ever read, heard, uttered or even imagined ("Wait... is #*&%#@!!! even a word??? Oh what the heck? It works!") goes tearing through your brain.... and eventually it passes and you keep working, surprised you're not even limping and it doesn't hurt more than it does... and almost an hour later, when you're finished and getting undressed to take your first hot shower in days, you see a lump on your shin the size of Rhode Island... and the first image that pops into your head is John Merrick yelling "I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!!!... in fact, it literally looks like a second knee on your right leg... so you spend the rest of the evening keeping it elevated and icing it on and off, alternating between a blue gel pack and a bag of frozen peas.... and when you go to bed, you keep the gel pack on while you read and then take it off before you go to sleep... and then you wake up around 3AM and decide to check your shin and the swelling has gone down quite a bit... but since you still have several hours before you get up, you decide to ice it again... but the gel pack on the floor is no longer cold so you get up, walk to the kitchen and open the fridge... and after taking a bite of leftover pizza from last night (because... well, you're here and what the heck?), you go into the freezer, grab the bag of frozen peas and take them back to bed with you... but they're all frozen into one big solid ball and well, that won't do... so you lay the bag on the bed to pound it once or twice to break them up, but instead the bag bursts open and suddenly there are frozen peas sprayed all over the bed and rolling onto the floor... and all those words from yesterday come rushing back into your head as you kneel to gather them all up... but suddenly your anger completely vanishes and you can't help laughing to yourself as you think, "gee, I can't remember the last time I pea'd the bed in the middle of the night"???

I have written this book to sweep away all misunderstandings about the crafty art of punnery and to convince you that the pun is well worth celebrating.... After all, the pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are much more likely to run into a pun than into a sword. [A pun is a witticism involving the playful use of a word in different senses, or of words which differ in meaning but sound alike.]

Scoffing at puns seems to be a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries a steady barrage of libel and slander has been aimed at the practice of punning. Nearly three hundred years ago John Dennis sneered, “A pun is the lowest form of wit,” a charge that has been butted and rebutted by a mighty line of pundits and punheads.

Henry Erskine, for example, has protested that if a pun is the lowest form of wit, “It is, therefore, the foundation of all wit.” Oscar Levant has added a tag line: “A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don’t think of it first.” John Crosbie and Bob Davies have responded to Dennis with hot, cross puns: “...If someone complains that punning is the lowest form of humor you can tell them that poetry is verse.”

Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century self-appointed custodian of the English language, once thundered, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse... ”

Joseph Addison pronounced that the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and tho’ they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius, that which is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.

Far from being invertebrate, the inveterate punster is a brave entertainer. He or she loves to create a three-ring circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent tops, words thrusting their head into the mouths of lions. Punnery can be highly entertaining, but it is always a risky business. The humor can fall on its face, it can lose its balance and plunge into the sawdust, or it can be decapitated by the snapping shut of jaws. While circus performers often receive laughter or applause for their efforts, punsters often draw an obligatory groan for theirs. But the fact that most people groan at, rather than laugh at, puns doesn’t mean that the punnery isn’t fu