Me Talk Pretty One Day Puns

Got quite a few groans I was pretty proud of today!

We were talking about hiring a new manager for a field team, and it turned out the guy we liked the most had several felony convictions for gun possession.

COO: I'm not sure we can take the risk, despite his valuable experience.
Me: Well guys, at least we know he'll stick to his guns.

I'll make a very good dad one day.

I hadn't put my own picture up on my dating profile, just a picture of my pickup. But that's okay, because she'd just put a picture of her dog. I sent her a message, something almost-clever like "your dog can ride in my pickup any time," and she responded.

We clicked pretty quickly, and started chatting regularly. Every day, sometimes throughout the day. Slowly we learned more about each other. Her dog's name was Daisy. My truck's name was Dodge Ram (I apologized for my lack of creativity). She was a CPA. I was a beekeeper.

And at this, she stumbled. "If we ever meet in real-life, I want you to know that I could never date a beekeeper." But we were still far away from that point, so it was moot.

But time went on, and we gradually became closer to that point. More personal information. What firm she worked for. Where my farm was. Names of relatives. Names of high schools. All the things that just come up in conversation eventually if you talk to someone long enough.

But, oddly, after all this time, neither of us had thought to send any pictures. Until one day I got a message from her: "I never thought I'd say this, but I really do want to meet you in person. I think we have a rare connection, and I don't want to squander it. I want to send you my picture, and I want you to send me yours, but I'm telling you, I can never date a beekeeper."

I couldn't imagine a life without my bees. But I also couldn't imagine a life without her. Tentatively, reluctantly, I clicked on the image attached to her message.

Then I saw her face. Now I'm a bee leaver.

Last summer, my girlfriend and I went camping. One of the days, we were having lunch by a river (a kind of a picnic sort of thing). Now, I talk a lot when I eat, so she finished eating waaaaay before I did. Once she was finished, she took to the water to cool off while I continued munching away.

Now, I guess she must have slipped or something, because all of a sudden I heard a cry and she was just gone. Washed away. I saw her head bob above the surface probably 20 yards downstream, and moving fast towards some rapids (probably 100-150 yards away). So I'm pretty panicked at this point, but she manages to grab onto a low-hanging branch (just like in a movie or something). She's coughing and sputtering and hollering for help, trying to keep a grip on the branch.

So, I set down my avocado I'd been snacking on and walked out into the water. "hurry! I can't hold on much longer," she's yelling. I kept walking towards her, but the bottom of the river was so muddy that it was probably pretty slow. She started to get angry with me "SWIM over here! Why are you walking? Please hurry!" She yelled, with great urgency. All in all, it took me probably 8 minutes to cover the 80 yards or so to get to her. After I rescued her, she was super mad for some reason. She was all "I almost died, why were you going so slow? Who does that? What's wrong with you?"

"Well," I said. "Good things are worth wading for."

This is the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, after the story ends. After chopping down the beanstalk, Jack realizes that he’s actually pretty damn good with an axe, and casual vegetative vandalism really struck his fancy, so he began chopping down other trees for a living. He became a traveling woodsman, and he enjoyed many years of his simple life of manual labor.

One day, as he chops wood, he hears screams from a nearby cottage. Hurriedly breaking in (because recall: jack has no problem with entering houses uninvited), he sees a cross dressing lycanthrope attempting to devour a little girl dressed all in red and her little grandmother too. Wielding his trusty axe, Jack murdered yet another fantasy creature, and safely led Little Red all the way back home. Answering the door was a beautiful woman of around his age. After sending Little Red to bed, the two of them talked for hours.

One thing led to another, and a year later they were married with a child on the way. They had a beautiful little boy named Jack Junior who followed in his father’s steps to become a woodsman. This was fortunate, because as Junior grew up, Jack was feeling the pain of his previous adventures. An old back injury from jumping from the beanstalk was haunting him, and over time his posture grew more and more hunched. He had a tough time working, but at least Junior was becoming a strapping young man.

One day, Jack and Junior took the long road to the grandmothers place to bring her a meal, just like that fateful trio Red took so many years ago. When they arrived, the grandmother greeted them cheerily, welcoming them in and making conversation. “Oh Junior,” she said, “you’ve grown into such a handsome and strong young man. It’s so kind of you to handle all the work so your poor father, with his bad back and all, doesn’t have to. Why don’t you have a girlfriend yet?” Junior hesitated. “Well Grandma,” he replied. “It’s because... I’m gay”. The close-minded, set-in-her-ways grandma’s expression became stormy. She pulled poor hunched-over Jack into adjacent room, and whispered angrily: “Jack, your life is a mess! Your posture is terrible and your son isn’t giving me any grandsons!” Jack replied: “Ma, we’re happy, you can’t just-“ But she interrupted. “No excuses!” She snapped. “You need to straighten your lumbar, Jack!”

So in my calculus class last year in math, there were these two Chinese twins. Ving, and Ling. Ving was always super cool with me. In exchange for answers (he was super smart) I would hang out with him and be his friend and stuff. After I cheated off of him and studied with him though, I did get to be his friend and we got very close.

His sister, Ling, was always uptight about school and she made sure to study, she got stressed about a B, etc. One day I was hanging out with Ving, and we started talking about names. He went off on this huge rant about how he hated his, and how he wanted to change it to something more Asian-American, like Lee. I told him that the Courthouse downtown had a form that you could fill to legally change it. He told me: "I always give you answers. If you could just drive me down to the courthouse this one time, I will never forget you. I just hate this god-forsaken Chinese name and I want to get rid of it forever."

He seemed pretty adamant about it, so I decided the best decision would be to take him. We walked out to my car, and right as I put the keys in the ignition Ling came running and tapped on the car door like a madman. I rolled it down and she started freaking out about how Ving's name had been passed down through generations and generations, but Ving didn't care. He just wanted to go down to the Courthouse and get it over with.

Ling figured that coming with would be the best idea, so if anything else came up that she would be needed for, she would be there for Ving. Honestly, I felt stuck in the middle of a family feud, so I just took her along. When we got to the Courthouse, Ving confidently walked up to the front desk and asked the receptionist if he could change his name. She gave him a little packet of paper and told him to sit down. Ling and I waited patiently while Ving filled out his info. I was watching him fill it out and I noticed he really did want to change his name to Lee.

Before he finished, though, he started tearing up. He told me he couldn't change his name. He asked the lady at the front that he couldn't do it, and she told him he would need twenty dollars to cancel the request. Ling was so relieved and happy that he changed his mind, she dug through her purse, found the money, and started to hand it to the receptionist.

It was at this moment that the most stereotypical Asian man burst through the doors. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a visor, American flag shorts, flip flops, everything. This