The Unintended Pun as Self-Entertainment

Perhaps the best part about saying and then noticing Unintended Puns is their self-entertainment value. The tricky part, of course, is to not notice them too soon, and therefore cut yourself off before you get to say (or think) them. If you do sense one coming, and cut yourself off, you risk the danger of a brain hiccup and/or unpleasant mouth distortion, either of which in the presence of others leads to embarrassment and social ostracism. Of course, if you make puns on purpose too often, as an Unintended Punster/Verbally Fluent person would tend to do, you may be familiar with the ostracism.

I have a relatively old one (date unknown--perhaps a year or two old), and a brand new one to share today.

circa 2010
I had just read from a book called The Novel 100 by Daniel S. Burt. (It discusses the novels' themes, characters, and style, and I am reading it as part of my curriculum so I can gain insight on how better to write my novel.) It was the end of the day. As I turned out the light, thinking it had been a productive day, I thought to myself: “That's another Saturday in the books.”

June 10, 2011
As my son and I were watching the NHL finals, and saw a puck go flying into the stands, my son wondered aloud why there wasn't more netting to protect the fans. I thought to myself: “Maybe they think it would look too rinky-dink.”

Both puns provide me some amusement. In the second case, I didn't tell my son what I had thought, knowing his reaction would be either a groan or something along the lines of "Really, Dad?" In the first case, I suppose you could say it was the perfect cap to my day, except I hadn't had a night cap in either the literal of figurative sense, so it doesn't work to say that in this blog. It was, however, the perfect word play--since I had just read a book about books, and indeed in the parlance of accounting, the day was in the books.