Puns: Enjoy Them While You Can

Once the oceans and the robots rise up and destroy us, after the nukes and the supervolcanoes have exploded, and the straggling remainder are finished off by antibiotic-resistant pandemics . . . once the human race is wiped off the face of this planet, we will not be remembered for our intelligence or our foresight, but hopefully some future civilization will appreciate the thing at which we were the best . . . our sense of humor-- and it is for this alien culture that I write this sentence: yesterday in Creative Writing class I had my students play Scattergories as a brainstorming activity and then told them to apply the methodology to their own imagery piece-- go deep into your brain for details, avoid the obvious, and the sift through what you have and choose the best-- but one girl got obsessed with the game itself and kept searching for categories on her computer:

Student: Dairy products . . . that's a good category . . .

Teacher: That is a good category . . . but you can't just list dairy products for your piece, what kind of tone would that be?

Student: (without missing a beat) A little bit cheesy . . .

and we all rejoiced and then the kids taught me this joke:

why did the mushroom go to the party?

because he's a fun guy!