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Of all my blog posts, this may be the one that strikes closest to my soul. Prepare yourself for a heavy dose of Essence of Ian. We begin with an anecdote, taken from my time in London. I went with my friend Abby on a bus tour to Stonehenge and Bath, and to pass the time I started making jokes. For whatever reason (I’m sure it made sense contextually), they were all puns about hair. This went on for about 15 minutes. Nonstop. For a quarter of an hour, nary a sentence left my lips that was not punishment (or should I say--bunishment) for my eternally sweet and suffering friend. But no matter how much pain and existential regret my jokes caused, I found myself powerless to stop. I punned to-and-afro until we arrived. I still get upbraided about it. Some say puns are the lowest form of humor. I disagree; to concoct a pun requires a depth of understanding beyond simple contradiction or broken expectations. It requires a mastery of language unmatched in other forms of humor. Some comedians go blue. Some go awkward. Some go surreal. Each of these methods requires a different understanding of people, but puns engage with and twist the rules and nuances of our incredibly complex language to derive double meanings and juxtapositions.
To craft a truly excellent pun requires creativity. It requires an eagerness to explore. It requires intelligence. It requires a willingness to fail. It requires trust in your companions and in yourself. To craft a truly excellent pun is an exercise in self-improvement. I blame/thank my father for my incessant punnery, though I sometimes wonder if my love for puns can be written off as Stockholm Syndrome. They were certainly pernicious and inescapable in my youth, spewing from my father’s mouth like Old Faithful, unmitigated and unstoppable. For years and years I denied myself joy from these jokes—until I had the marvelous realization that I loved them. What I had perceived as cage bars were, in truth, ladder rungs leading to a higher level of intellectual engagement, to a realm populated by puzzles and wordplay. And once I ascended, I never went back. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether my deep adoration for puns has its roots in true intellectual alignment or whether my resistance was undercut by years and years of incessant exposure. At this point I’m so far gone that the quality of the pun doesn’t even factor into my enjoyment of it. It could have the most contrived and drawn out set-up for a punchline with zero bangs for its bucks. Quality doesn’t count nearly as much as intention; I can’t promise that every double-entendre will have me doubled over in stitches, but I make a concerted effort to appreciate and encourage pun-making wherever I find it. I take (and often give) great pains to weave them into my daily life—out here in Iowa, surrounded by nothing but cornrows, we need all the entertainment we can get. Even if your jokes don’t spring a guffaw-fest on the room, I promise that I, at least, still care. A ton. Get it? Keratin, care-a-ton? I’m hopeless.
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