"The Key to Immortality", by Al Wyss-Jung

Lately I've begun to wonder if the spam mongers have had to resort to hiring middle schoolers to write their emails. Today I was sent an ad for penis enlarging cream from a mister "Lucein Hand" with the subject line "I'm not anymore!". I have to admit it made me giggle; more out of nostalgia than anything else. The pun (in the popular book title form) was a powerful thing in the 6th grade, it separated the babies who still laughed anytime someone said "poopy" or "booger" from those who had developed a more refined, *adult* sense of humor. You had to think about "The Trials of a Bedwetter", by I.P. Nightly. Booger, indeed. Well at least that's how Scotty and I saw it. When we weren't getting kicked out of History for having heated debates over the upcoming Carter/Reagan election --all true, on our way to the principal's office the teacher said, and I quote, "I will never understand why you two insist on wasting your time with such foolishness." You and 60% of America lady-- we were making up puns. During lunch we would entertain a whole crowd at our table with the names we had created and memorized the night before, shoot them off rapid fire, pausing only as long as it took for those glue-eating philistines to 'get it' and reward us with peals of laughter. Scotty always got the bigger laughs though, but he had an unfair advantage. Scotty is a dwarf, and everything is just plain funnier when a dwarf says it.

Anyway, the email inspired me to dust off my mad punning skills and try to give it a go. I discovered I am woefully out of practice. The best one I could come up with was the title of this post. Maybe you can shoot some back at me to kick the cobwebs off. And no cheating.

[Oh, and if anyone knows a dwarf named Scotty from upstate New York, tell him that I would have never survived five years in that shithole town without him and his wicked smarts, and thanks, and I hope he got over that whole Republican phase (not to say I told you so... but Reagan? Were you high? Do you remember me warning you about what would happen in the Middle East if Reagan were elected?...I'm just sayin') and that I love him and I hope he's happy. And I mean it.]