City Lights Puns

It was a fragrant disregard for public safety.

It wasn’t the real deal but it was par-ish

They just needed the mayor to green light the project

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.

It was a sunny afternoon in the city, and a 29 foot Amazonian Anaconda slithered into a hipster burger store. The snake slithered up to the counter and looked over the menu to find that everything was gluten free. The anaconda was disappointed, because he always found that the light fluffy bread on each end of his burger was his favorite part of the burger.

The clerk greeted him with a smile. "Hello! My name is Hyun! Can I take your order?" he said.

The anaconda responded with a sentence so foul I cannot type it here. It contained several swear words and many racial slurs against his server, all because the burgers would be served without buns.

Hyun reeled back in disgust. He requested an apology from the snake. Again, the anaconda belted out horrible curses and vulgarities.

Hyun, being the good Christian man that he is, said that he would call upon his good friend Sister Alice to perform an exorcism on the snake if he didn't leave. The snake finally slithered out upon hearing this.

About an hour later, the anaconda slithered back in with his owner. They approached the counter.

"Now what seems to be the problem here?" Said the anaconda's owner.

"This snake came in swearing up a storm and causing all kind of trouble all because we don't serve gluten in this restaurant" said Hyun.

"I threatened to call my friend Sister Alice to perform an exorcism if he didn't leave."

"Oh" said the anaconda's owner "Sorry about that. My Anaconda don't want nun unless you got buns, Hyun".

When I was a kid, and my parents would drive me somewhere, we often had to take a road that had a bunch of brothels by the side. It's not a dirty neighbourhood or anything, just a fairly busy street between two cities. One time, my dad slowed down, and started waving at the ladies in the brothels.

I saw him waving and tried to see what he was waving at. "Look son, all these ladies know me", he said. And indeed, all these barely clothed ladies standing in these houses with flashy lights were waving right back at him. I was completely in aww of him! When I asked him who those ladies were he wouldn't answer, he'd only say: "oh, just good friends". He did that the next couple of times we passed that road and it took me a few years to figure out what was going on.

My dad is a truck driver. This story gets everyone he's ever told it to: Dad: "So I'm driving through Detroit at about 3-4am to start my route. As you know, most of the inner city roads are crap, and are polluted with potholes. Suddenly I see an ambulance in my mirror going full speed with its lights on. I immediately pull off to the side of the road to let it pass. This is where it gets crazy... The ambulance drives through the intersection bouncing through potholes and as it does, the back door flies open and a cooler pops out, but the ambulance keeps going like nothing happened. Well I was the only one around at that time of the night so I immediately stopped to grab the cooler. I bring it into my cab and it has a hazmat sticker on it but the seal is broken. So I decided to open it up and see what was inside. It was a human toe!" Me: "Holy shit! What did you do!?" Dad: "I called the toe truck"

I go to school in Berkeley, CA, which--to put it lightly--isn't in the running for "Clean City, USA". The other day, I was swapping out my nice expensive shoes for my old tattered street sneakers when my friend asked why I was switching. My dad senses kicked in:

"Could you imagine me walking through the streets of Berkeley in my nice clean dress shoes? The poor soles!"