The Honking Puns

"He's not gonna sell much ice cream going at that speed"

Kids: looks up from their phones, “why did you do that for?”

Dad: “to scare away the elephants!”

Kids: “what elephants?!!”

Dad: “see it’s working!”

——

Thank you! Thank you very much!

It was a toot and car moon.

Honking the horn won't make me text any faster.

"Who is that?"

"No idea, but they'll be wondering who I am all day"

As the engine sputters and shuts down the woman driving the car steers toward a nearby driveway and honks the horn hoping to get the attention of a guy herding cattle in the distance. Sure enough within a minute the man has ridden his horse over to her. He dismounts and gives a happy “Hello! Sounds like you’re having some car trouble. Can I help at all?” The woman replies that she’s not sure what happened but that she would love some help. They pop the hood and the man says he thinks he can fix the problem but has to run back to his barn to get some tools. The cows have come to see what’s going on and as the farmer gets ready to leave he says “Don’t worry about your car. I’ll have it running in a few minutes. Just head over there to the shade of the tree by the fence. The cows are all friendly. Bessy there likes to have her ear rubbed, Albert likes to look at people, and Mare will just moo a grand ole tune.” All of it is true and within 20 minutes the woman is happily sitting in her car with the engine running better than before. “Thank you so much, you’re a life saver,” she says. The man smiles and lets out a big laugh before saying “I’m glad I could help. But I’m no life saver. I’m just a jolly rancher.”

He sighed and said, "I'm not falling for that one."

I said, "Trust me, it is."

He let me in and five minutes later I heard him honking on the horn, so I looked out the window.

He said, "Stop messing around, will you? Your wallet. You must have found it by now."

I said, "No, I haven't got it."

"Well, why the hell not?"

I said, "This isn't my house."

Once and a while in the car, when my dad noticed I was distracted (playing my gameboy, reading, etc) he would honk the horn and wave out the window. He said it was his brother 'Raoul', I just missed him. I always wondered why I never met uncle Raoul, or what he was always doing standing out in a farmer's field or something. God damnit dad.

Back in the late 80's, my dad had a joke he loved to tell everyone he met. It went something like this:

I was driving down the road and ended up behind this ambulance with its rear door open. I tried honking and flashing my lights to get their attention about it, but they didn't seem to notice. As they turned the corner away from us, a small cooler fell out. I pulled over to rescue the cooler, and when I opened it, I found a human toe, on ice.

At this point, the victim of the joke is supposed to ask what he did with the toe. He responds with "I called the Tow Truck!" and hearty laughter.

Being the 1980's, e-mail wasn't prevalent, and calling long distance could get expensive, so he communicated with his out of state family primarily through mailed letters. He wrote this joke (sans punchline) in a letter to his mom. Not knowing it was a joke, she told the story to her friends and family. My aunt heard this story, and told it to her classes (she's a teacher) and one of her students actually got in a fight with his mom who said that could never happen.

A month or two later, we were getting together for a holiday and the toe story came up in conversation. My dad replied that he called the tow truck, and his laughter was met with horrified stares. By this time, nearly everyone in the small town was enthralled with this amazing story that my grandma had told about her son who lived in the city. She was imagining all of the people she had to contact to tell the real story to. Many took it in stride, but others were quite annoyed. Especially my aunt, who had to apologize to every one of her classes at school.

TLDR: A dad joke with no punch line doesn't belong in a letter.

Last night I had to go to my son's 6th grade band concert. He plays the trumpet. Most of the band, like my son, only started playing their instruments this year so the quality was far less than professional.

We walked out of the school together and he had a hop to his step feeling really proud. It was a shame to tell him that I could barely see him let alone hear him by the squeaks and honks him and his classmates created.

I rubbed his hear and asked, "You play the trumpet, right son?"

He gave me a strange look. "You know I do, dad."

"So, you got to toot your own horn tonight, huh?'

His eye roll was worth it.

The nice part was being able to retell it to my older step daughter who giggled at my joke. A two for one!

During class last Friday, two cars started honking at each other all of a sudden outside out of our classroom window.

One student looks out and says, "Oh, it's just two mail trucks going past each other."

The teacher immediately replys, "Wow, I wonder how female trucks greet each other then."

First one, we were in some really bad St. Paddy's Day traffic. The people around us were honking and getting pissed and cutting each other off. She remarked that "someone's gonna get in an accident...well, in this case it would be an 'on purpose.'"

Second one, we were at the zoo and I pointed out the zebras, saying that I had spotted them. "Uh, don't you mean you striped them?"

Dad: "Hey buddy, can you check under the car? Something doesn't sound right."

puts head under engine bay

Me: "I don't think I hear anyth-"

Dad: honks horn for 5 seconds, laughs maniacally after he hears the thump of my head

We were driving somewhere, and suddenly Mom says, mock seriously, "You know what you're supposed to do when you see a goose in the road?"

Me: "Slow down?"

Mom: "Honk."