Featured Columnist

March 8, 2001 10 PM

A pun-a-day vitamin makes for a happy face.

It’s better than multi-vitamins and, for most people, easier to swallow, although there are some who will make a bad face at a good pun. To them I say, try choking down those horse pills the doctor gave me for iron repletion and see if a well-formed pun doesn’t go down easier.

Happy faces are popular on the Internet, puncutating messages that are liable to be misinterpreted or those jokes too subtle to be appreciated. You make them with a colon and a right parenthesis sign :).

But I digress – just two paragraphs into this missive.

My favorite mail these days is e-mail. One, it never goes to bed before I do; two, it makes me happy; and three, it likes to stay up late and yak.

Unlike much of the stuff that comes to me through the Internet, those nasty "buy-me" messages for instance, my e-mail is always welcome. Oh sure, occasionally, I get some adults only stuff, but after careful consideration over a several-day period, I decide to dump it before actually reading it, so it’s not too bad a nuisance to bear (or is that bare?).

If you have an e-mail address you’re going to get some trash, and there are those who say the internet is a treasure-trove of trivia, but it’s the treasures that I crave. I’m not too sure I believe all of it. I suspect some of it is Internet drivel.

I guess these little vignettes are the current-day suburban myths: Poodles being dried in the microwave, claw hooks on the door of the car at Lover’s Lane, and the roaches in the teased hair?

And what about those tear-jerker stories? Perhaps I am just a cynical geezette, but I am not convinced by the heart-wrenching tales about teenagers snatched from the jaws of evil by saintly, ordinary people who just happen to be raising money for a favorite charity, either. The Net is replete with these tales, most of them containing happy endings too cutesy to be believed.

Keeping up with the goings-on of my children and friends is worth all the other stuff (we call it spam) that comes my way and if I am forced to the wall, I will admit I actually enjoy most of the junk mail, too. After all, I am the one who reads all the stuff marked "Occupant" we retrieve from the mailbox at the street.

One of the best things about e-mail is the jokes it delivers. It’s like having Johnny Carson in the guest room. I love a good pun and up-pun my soul, this is a good one:

This guy is driving his old Ford truck down the highway and all of a sudden, a rabbit darts out and he hits it. He jumps out of his car and sees the lifeless rabbit lying there and is overcome with sorrow.

Just then a lady in a car stops and asks him what happened. He tells her all about how the rabbit ran in front of him, and he didn’t get a chance to swerve to miss it, and he killed the poor little rabbit. The lady tells him that she has something to help and goes to her trunk and brings an aerosol can over to the rabbit.

Spraying wildly and occasionally stopping to shake the can and clear the nozzle, she empties the entire contents on the lifeless road pizza. Suddenly, the rabbit springs back to life, runs along the road 40 feet and stops to wave back at the wide-eyed pair.

He runs another 40 feet along the road and stops to wave at them again. He continues to run away from them and stops to wave every so often until he is out of sight.

Well. The man is so amazed and can’t believe what he has just seen. "What the heck have you got in that can? he sputters. She looks at the label on the can and reads it to him: "Hairspray: Restores life to dead hair and gives it a permanent wave."

Ta tum tum tum.

And another 🙂 is produced by the Internet.

Fran Sharp is a freelance writer living in Alabaster with a healthy respect for puns. Send yours to fsharp1229@aol.com.  

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