The Simple Things Puns

Previously it would've a curd to me.

My dad worked in construction for most of his life, and because he worked with his hands, he sacrificed many watches. But if you don't have a watch, how are you to tell time? My dad has a great sense of humor and is always thinking of new ways to do things to make them more practical or thinking of ways to change things to make them work better for him. So after spending way too much money on a heavy duty watch that inevitably broke on him, he came up with a better solution.

He used the working part of a clock and stuck it on the inside rim of his hat, so if he wanted to know what the time was, he just had to look up. Simple. And the way his hat was, you couldn't see the clock when looking at him unless you were underneath him and looking up.

And then came the funny part. Every time he was asked what time it was, he would look up at the sun, scan the horizon, pretend to do a math equation in his head, and tell them the exact time down to the minute. I've witnessed him doing this a few times but never gave it away. The look of surprise and confusion this gave people was priceless.

My dad had done other funny things like this, but this was by far the funniest.

He was operating a late night train and fell asleep at the controls. He ended up failing to recognise a stop sign and as a result his train hit a person and killed them immediately. He was tried for manslaughter and sentenced to the electric chair. Just before being put in the chair, he was given the choice of final meal and chose a single banana, oddly. His time came and he was placed into the chair, the room vacated and then the switch was thrown.

But... Nothing. No sparks, no burning, nothing. They checked the machine and it was working fine, it just seemed not to harm him. The state law meant that, legally, his sentence had been carried out and he was free to go. He walked away a free man, and actually got another job as a train driver.

Sadly, almost exactly the same thing happened again. This time his negligence killed two kids playing around on the tracks when again he'd fallen asleep and failed to stop the train in time. Hauled before the courts again, he got exactly the same sentence - the electric chair. He was asked again for his final meal, chose two bananas this time, and his sentence was carried out again.

And yet again, he didn't die. In fact, he was entirely unharmed. The state law remained the same, so he was let out again, where - somehow - he got another job with another train company. I guess it was the only job he was trained for (pardon the pun). Anyway, this time he did much better and worked hard to stay awake during his late shifts. But sure enough, eventually he slipped back in to old habits and this time killed five people - a family trying to free their dog stuck in the tracks.

Once again he faced a jury, once again they found him guilty and a judge sentenced him to the electric chair. This time he asked for 5 bananas, but the guard was wiley - he has read about this man and how he always had bananas before his sentence was carried out, and so this time (with a grin, it's said) he brought the train driver 5 apples instead. The guilty man plead and begged for bananas, but the guard claimed it was an honest mistake but too late to change now.

The man was lead for a third time to the electric chair. His head was wetted, his arms strapped in, and the guard eyed him with something between wonder and fear. Finally the room was vacated and the switch thrown. Surely this time the machine would do its job? With the process finished, the guard ran back into the room, only to find the man still alive and looking entirely healthy. "I do

My grandmother was cremated and we were having a service to pay our respects. I was scared and didn't want to go up to the altar alone so my dad went with me.

We stood there, side by side, and stared in reverent silence at the small simple wooden box which was holding my grandmother's ashes. After a minute or so passed my father bowed slightly, leaning in with what I assumed would be words of wisdom and said, "your grandmother was a lot smaller than I remember."

I had to fight just not to bust out laughing in a room full of mourners.

I was told to cross post this here from an askreddit thread yesterday

A man walks into a peculiar bar. There’s a small man no more than a foot tall playing the piano in the corner, men with horns and many other odd things. He noticed people huddled around a table. He walks up to the bartender and asks “what’s going on over there?” The bartender replies,” oh it’s a game, if you win a genie will grant you one wish”. “Really! Can I wish for anything!?” The Bartender says “yup just be specific and enunciate. Trust me” “How do you play!?” The man asks excitedly “It’s simple if you roll snake eyes you win. Everyone gets one chance and no more” The man runs over the the table and waits his turn. Once he gets up to the table he rolls snake eyes, he’s ecstatic. A genie appears over the table and says”you get one wish” The man is jumping up and down in excitement. He can hear the bartender saying something but ignores him and says”I want a million bucks!” The genie says”done” snaps his fingers and disappears. In that moment one million male deer, elk, antelope and other animals fill the bar spilling out into the street. After several minutes the stampede leaves the bar and the man says” what was that that wasn’t what I wanted!?” The bartender says “what did I say!? I told you to be specific and enunciate!” “Oooh I see But how did you know that would happen” the man says “Do you really think I wished for a twelve inch pianist?”

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!”

My wife was teaching her best friend how to knit. She was doing quite well but for some extra encouragement I said:

"The basics are simple enough. It's when you get into the knitty gritty that things start to unravel.

Wife and friend shake their heads, so I say "Sorry, I didn't mean for my purls of wisdom to needle you."

More groans...

"Still," I said, "at least I kept it short and sweet. I mean, I could've spun you a proper yarn."

Wife to friend: "Right, pass me that soddin' knitting needle...!"

Really close family friend of ours told us this one that allegedly happened while he was on duty. I'm going to tell it from his perspective, as it reads the 'funniest'.

So I'm on duty and we have to go and put out a simple brush fire off to the side of a busy intersection. Since it's the dry season of Southern California literally the smallest spark can cause a giant fire you know, so we're trying to put it out pretty fast. So we arrive there and we notice that an ambulance is speeding down the road to this one pretty sharp bend, and you know, they're making haste since they're on a code 3. A code 3 is where both the siren and the lights are on at the same time and they obviously have something that they need to do. Anyways, they're speeding around this corner and one of the backdoors gets flung open and a cooler flies out and lands at the curb. By this point we've handled the fire and we're just assessing the damage, like where it's spread, stuff like that, so I go and retrieve the container and I open it and inside there's a human toe in there. I tell most of my crew and we decide that we'll get the toe back to the paramedics and then head back to the station. So we call the emergency services and we let them know that some EMT's have left a human body part and didn't come back to get it. They tell us, "we'll have someone come pick it up soon". We wait about 20 minutes and no one arrives and we're all a bit startled that no one's come back to come pick up a fucking human toe, so we call back and they give us the same thing. Half an hour goes by so I decide to call AAA and see if they can help us. Sure enough, AAA is able to help us and within 10 minutes they dispatch the help we need by sending us a toe truck.

Basically we somehow got on the topic of hipsters and irony. My Dad wanted to make a sort of pun to annoy my sister, because she hates puns.

Now I figure most people would make some sort of reference to an iron "e", and that would be it. But oh no, that's far too simple for him. He says something along the lines of,

"If they're ironic (or defined by irony), doesn't that make them Pharisees?"

So you've got to know that "Ferrous" refers to iron, and then to have some basic knowledge of the New Testament or at least have heard of the Pharisees before. This kind of works on another level because the Pharisees were accused of saying one thing and doing another, which could be said to be ironic to some degree. Of course I've just killed the frog at this point, but I mean if you're ever around some Chemists who have some knowledge of the bible, you might get a slight chuckle, or perhaps even a nod. I'm not really even sure if this qualifies as a Dad joke, but there ya go.