Verbal gymnastics but jest in jousting:

Pun-slingers in showdown at sundown!

Gaston De ROSAYRO

The pun, some might claim, is the work of the Devil. It is a means of etching shades of Hades into a normal conversation. There are good puns, which make you laugh out loud and applaud the punster’s cleverness. There are decent puns, which make you think a minute and then say, “Oh, I get it. Ha!” There are, of course, bad puns, which inevitably set off a chorus of anguished moans and groans.

My old friend and former schoolmate Joshua, Josh for short, is an inveterate punster. Josh the josher calls himself the ‘Unchallenged King of the Pun’.

I concede he is a master of the play on words, the Grand Inquisitor who can inflict room-wide groans at the drop of a few twisty lines. And he has no shame over it at all. The problem, you see, is that he shows no mercy when it comes to dropping puns on you when you least expect it.

Although to be honest, you should always suspect that it will happen face-to-face with his Joshy enders. But with him it is a terminal addiction and no amount of PUN-ishment could ever cure his pun-lust. For instance, we still extract certain sketches of a painful past at our old school St Bens, in which the cane held sway as the order of the day.

In primary school, we 11-year-olds were extremely unfortunate to be in the clutches of a merciless teacher, nicknamed ‘London Canda’. He appeared to take a vicarious delight in flogging us pitilessly. He seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in thrashing his pupils in turn, one after the other for the most trifling infringements. He must have surely been an admirer of the perpetrators of the Spanish Inquisition.

But as I explained Josh could never get over his penchant for punning and took his medicine like a man.

Nothing, absolutely nothing could diminish his enthusiasm when it came to punning. He was swished mercilessly for the habit by the irate teacher. For instance, when we had to fill in the blanks for idioms he turned in his paper with some atrocious puns that personally offended the martinet teacher for their ‘un-punnyness.’

The test had certain idiomatic expressions in which we had to fill in the blanks such as, ‘Don’t change horses (in midstream)’ which he answered with ... ‘until they stop running.’ And, ‘Don’t bite the hand (that feeds you)’ with ...’that looks dirty’.

‘The idle mind’ was, to him, ‘the best way to relax’. Others included, ‘Where there is smoke there’ ... ‘is pollution’. Again in his weird way, ‘A penny saved is’ ...’not much’. ‘When the blind lead the blind’...’get out of the way’. And the best of the lot was, ‘Better late than’... ‘pregnant.’

Generally I have had one heck of a good time over the years hanging out with this relentless master of the pun. I confess he annoyed me no end at times with his silly bon mots. By now I had developed a high tolerance for the puns that Josh dropped freely in any situation and at any time. But I still got zinged ever so often even though I knew when one was coming. But revenge, they say, is sweet. And I plotted it with Machiavellian cunning when I induced my childhood friend Malka, whose verbal gymnastics are legendary, to join us for dinner at a spiffy Colombo restaurant.

If you ever wanted to have revenge on someone who has pummeled your ears over the years with puns, then Malka was the pun-slinger for the job.

Revenge would be all the sweeter for the wait .When it came to ammunition to humbling the half-witted master punster I was armed and ready and determined not to leave home without this witty weapon. It was the big pun-slinging showdown at sundown at the restaurant and the verbal crockery began flying straight away. Aware that Malka’s family owns a large printing and publishing venture, Josh fired the first salvo: “I’m surprised you are in the printing trade, because you just don’t seem to be the type.”

Apprised earlier that Josh was a photography enthusiast, Malka returned fire instantly: “Oh, I knew you were an old photographer because you seem to have stopped developing!” Touché! She had him there.

Josh was silent for a while. He then excused himself to go over to a table and meet his optometrist and a dubious investor who had recently received adverse newspaper publicity. Josh explained: “We all used to hang out together at university.” Malka quipped: “Go ahead and meet your optometrist and your wheeler-dealer. But don’t make a spectacle of yourself. If you all don’t hang together now you will all hang separately!”

We had trouble over the menu deciding over the curries. Malka grabbed the menu saying: “Okay let me order. Or you two will get curried away with the selection!” By now Josh seemed impressed by her punmanship prowess. He threw in the towel and remarked in a conciliatory tone: “I’m certainly glad there’s only one of you Malka!” She shot him a saccharine look and said: “I used to be twins. My mother has a picture of me when I was two.”

Replete after the dinner, Malka suggested a round of cognac. Raising her glass she proposed a toast or rather roast all round: “It has been a delightful jest in jousting, gentlemen. Now let’s finish this one and have pun for the road!”

Josh was truly zapped. He grinned good-naturedly as he waved his white napkin in surrender!