Their Big Moment Puns

One cold winter's morning he was walking along a country road, when he heard a cry for help from a nearby lake.

He turned to see a little girl struggling in the broken ice in the middle of the lake. She'd been skating and had fallen into the icy water. Without a moment's hesitation the tramp ran onto the ice and slipped and slided over to the little girl. He managed to pull her out without breaking the ice further and he carried her back to the road.

He took off his coat and wrapped the little girl in it and began looking for a car to flag down. A few moments later a huge chauffeur-driven limo pulled up, and who stepped out but the little girl's father - the mayor of the nearby town and a multi-millionaire.

"How can I ever thank you sir?" says the father after putting his daughterinto the warmth of the limo.

"Just name your price - I'm a wealthy man."

"Ahem, well ..." stammered the tramp "...eh I'm a little short of cash, perhaps you could help me out"

"Certainly" says the girl's father and he pulls out his wallet.

"Oh dear" says the father, "I don't carry much cash with me, I only have ten dollars - but come home with me and I'll get more from the safe"

"No! No!" says the tramp, "Why ten dollars is more money than I've seen in my whole life - that will be plenty".

"Well, if you insist" says the father - "now what will you do with your money?"

"Oh that's easy" says the tramp "I've not had a rest in 20 years. I think I'll buy myself a holiday"

"Well good luck" says the father, and he gets into the car and signals his chauffeur to drive home.

"Ten Dollars" thinks the tramp, "I'm rich! I'm rich!", and off he goes to the town, to buy himself a holiday.

He finds a travel agent, walks in - much to the disgust of the staff - and goes up to the desk.

"I'll have one holiday please!"

"Ahem, which holiday would sir like" asked the girl at the desk, forcing a smile.

"Oh, any holiday I don't mind" replied the tramp.

"Well how much money does sir have to spend on sir's holiday?"

"Oh lots - anything up to ten dollars"

"TEN DOLLARS!! You'll never get a holiday for ten dollars" says the girl incredulously.

"Oh dear" said the tramp, "and I was so looking forward to a holiday - I'll probably never get another chance - isn't there anything you can do?"

"Well I don't think so sir, but hold on and I'll check"

The girl goes into the back of the shop, and searches in the deepest, dustiest filing drawers she can find. There - to her amazement -

Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.

But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."

It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.

You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.

In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.

This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un

[Sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to share this with you]

Ok, so technically this was before I knew I was a dad at the time, and it happened a long time ago, so I'm paraphrasing it a bit (have to leave out some details. It's work related lol), but I'm really proud of it.

I was having this workplace dispute with this really snively guy who was being a bit of a prick about some work assignment he was really proud of. Long story short, he was worried about someone else taking credit for something and wanted me to talk to our boss about it for him (What does he think I am lol). Anyway, as I'm walking away I hear him coughing. So I turn around, and with this great big smile on my face, I'm like:

"Don't choke on your aspirations, mate."

Anyway, I thought it was a great line. I was smiling all the way back to my office. I don't know why it came to my mind at that moment, but it wasn't long before I'd meet my kids for the first time in years, and it was really great to reconnect with them.

Anyway, my kids are pretty popular (my son's a school teacher, so I don't want to embarrass him in front of the kids), and my daughter would be mortified to hear a dadjoke this terrible great so I'd appreciate if you didn't mention any details about me in the comments (might spoil their evening lol) it was just a nice little moment.

Anyway, just wanted to share the moment with you guys.

D. [To the mods, I know this is a kind of just a pun, but I thought it was worth posting here. I hope you guys understand.]