The Absence Puns

He said, “No em bussy.” He never has time for me.

It was a brisk Saturday morning when Gerald arrived at “The Café,” a hip coffee shop right down the street. Wearing his large, burly black coat, he stared hesitantly at his watch. Thick glasses adorned his bright blue eyes, his gaze like starlight in a clear night sky. He was waiting, intently twiddling his thumbs. After a buzz of his phone, the message from Dad popped up: “Parking now, be there in 5.”

“Dad,” he whispered under his breath, swiping the message away to once again reveal the image on his lock-screen: a hazy picture of an ultrasound.

Gerald had not spoken to his father for three years. They had had a falling out, over which he did not remember. To him it was a competition of who could wait the longest without calling or sending a text. Who could wait the longest: him without a father, or his father without a son? The idea of friction in the relationship hurt like a thorn; piercing his soul more and more everyday. Until recently, out of the blue, “Dad” popped up on his phone. The rest is history. The rest leads to that Saturday morning, at The Café.

Bang! A car door rang out not too far from where Gerald stood. Gerald saw him. His father wore his tweed jacket like a coat of armor. His strut was now weaker than before they stopped talking; a weakness evident in his cane which supported every right step. His shortly trimmed white beard juxtaposed against his uncut, curly grey hair gave him the image of a wise wizard from a fairytale. He used to be that figure to Gerald, yet instead of a nice ancient being acting like a stone to keep him grounded, Gerald had felt as though his father was a rock pulling him deeper and deeper into a sea of monotony. Holding him back from his true potential. Maybe that was why he left? He still did not know.

“Hello, son,” came the withered voice Gerald had sook for so long, yet now that it had arrived wanted to avoid. “I can’t believe it’s been so long!”

“Yeah,” said Gerald, allowing a smile to grace his face. “Too long!”

Then they hugged, signifying a change in their relationship. Gerald had hoped something could happen to bring them closer together. He did not want to go on wondering what could have been. The regret and sadness weighed him down. Before starting a new family, Gerald wanted to be reacquainted with his own.

After finding their table and sitting down, the two began to discuss life. It was like old friends catching up after a long break. Although it took some time, Gerald began to warm u

After inspecting his room, he comes back to the hotel manager saying, "I would like six forks and a sheet" after noticing the absence of those items in his room.

He gets kicked out.

"Why did you kick him out?" says one of the hotel staff.

"He told me he wanted sex, fucks, and a shit!"

It was my son's birthday, and we were doing a Thomas the Tank Engine theme. Went to the party supplies shop, and one of the things we got for the party was a helium balloon with Thomas on it. Gave it to him, told him to hold on to it, otherwise it would float up into the sky, all the way to the moon as Peppa Pig phrases it.

Anyway, I'm looking around and I notice something weird... there are Transformers helium balloons, Peppa Pig helium balloons, Barbie helium balloons, Thomas of course, various superheroes... but I notice the complete absence of Elsa and Anna on these balloons. But Frozen must be the most popular theme ever for girl's birthday parties, I would have thought. So why no Frozen helium balloons?

I asked at the counter, and they told me that they used to have them, but they got too many complaints. Apparently every time a parent gave the balloon to a kid, she'd just let it go...

We're a fairly advanced society, we need jokes with content that makes us think. All these easy laughs are making us dumber by the second, and we just keep rewarding them with upvotes that convince the lazy among us to keep churning out lazy jokes. Comedy is one of the only common traits things in every society and culture on this planet and we may not always agree with what is funny, it's very subjective, but no society or culture has no comedy. It's one of the most effective unifiers in all human existence. Of course it's just my two cents, but we really need to avoid cheapening it. There are 6500 spoken languages in the world and this is the most widely spoken, the least spoken languages of course being sign language. Someone once said "a world without laughter would be like a world without warmth, a dark hole in the ground filled with cold water." I know they mean well, but I think it's worse than that. There are three unwritten rules for how comedy should function in the world. We have to learn to follow them or we're doomed as a people, forever, however just like there are two butts in the word "assassin", there are two caveats to this dire situation with lessons learned from the best there is. One is the lesson we can take from Switzerland, I'm not entirely sure what makes them so good at integrating comedy into their lives, but their flag is a huge plus. The other is the lesson we can learn from farmers who know how to put what's important first, how to put in the effort into growing something, and they are always outstanding in their field. We get too caught up in standard modalities of thinking and none of us are totally all right, in fact most of us are at least close to half left. In closing, the absence of comedy when you really think about it, is fear. Fear of the ups and downs of life, much like a fear of elevators. And just like a fear of elevators, we all must take steps to avoid it. Thank you for your time.

Disappointed

Absence makes the heart crow fonder.

We had just gotten back from a long day's bike ride, when I noticed that the tree in front of our apartment building had been cut down in our absence. I turned to my dad asking him if he knew about this.

Without missing a beat he replies, "I don't know, I'm stumped!"

He didn't let me leave until I fist bumped him twice

Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

I've been very busy with personal stuff for the past few weeks, so I've let this subreddit drift unattended. Reading some of the reports and comments after coming back makes me realize that my absence led to some unwanted events happening!

Let's start with the fun stuff: We now have a new fancy rulebook! If you suspect a post of breaking these rules, feel free to report it in the relevant category, or use (8) other if you suspect it to slip through the cracks of one of the other rules.

Secondly, as of right now, we do not have an explicit rule forbidding inflammatory subjects like race, politics, etc, as the rest of reddit seems to be melting down, but so far we remain unscathed. I wish to let you all crack puns like adults without having to put on training wheels, but if any of the above subjects become a problem then I will swiftly revisit this. Consider this a privilege, not a right, and do try to avoid abusing it! Piggybacking off this, any post that is more 'lewd' than PG should be NSFW tagged. If it is inappropriate for an office setting, I will manually NSFW it, and repeat offenders will have consequences.

Third, you can now request puns! start a self post with [request] and put in whatever information is necessary, such as "[request] puns about clocks".

I'll keep this post stickied for about a week or so, to keep it as a nice feedback net, and we can adjust rules, add/delete/modify them as needed, to keep our subreddit of lovely puns in peak condition!

Presiding in his absence was the President Pro Temp-ura.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a dad joke, but... Whenever I missed school in my childhood or had to have something signed, like a progress report, I would usually have my mom sign it. The few times I forgot where she had already left for work, I would have my dad sign it. I would never look at it and just rush off to the bus. I would get to school and hand it into my teacher and she would look at me like I was an idiot and hand me the paper back:

"To whomever it may concern, Robrak was ill yesterday, please excuse his absence.

Abraham Lincoln"