Pun Repression

Last night (Friday night), I had a dreamed that on the internet I discovered there was a plane-owner named "Asp." In the dream, I was so excited that I decided to write a blog entry and to call it, "Snakes Own a Plane." (When I woke up, my efforts at googling "plane-owners" and "snakes" weren't quite as fruitful.)

The same night, I also had a dream that I was surfing the internet, and I discovered that a Danish guy had invented a new form of watermelon. In the dream, I decided to write another blog entry and call it, "Those lazy, hazy, crazy Danes of summer." I don't know, it made more sense in the dream ... eating watermelon during the summer, and all.

When I mentioned these dreams to my wife, she suggested that maybe I was repressing my desire to pun, and my subconscious mind was demanding an outlet. And you know, with early Freudian psychology, we all have this "id" that is trying to get us to do socially unacceptable things like engage in orgies, so, why not also accept that our "id" is trying to make us say bad puns in public? Our superegos reprimand us, "Do not make people groan in pain from a bad joke! It isn't nice!" so punning becomes a guilty pleasure. Perhaps we try to compensate, hiding our predilection: when we say the word "to," we giggle inwardly because we could also be saying "two," "too," or even "tu," and no one would be any the wiser. Soon, it becomes too much for us to take, and we might start punning in our sleep. Those unable to conform to social mores might take to violence, holding people hostage at gunpoint (a literal "captive audience"--"look out, he's got a pun!"), saying, "Have you had your shots? Laugh, or you will have your shots, oh yes, you will have your shots!" I think the moral of the story is that my wife should encourage me to make puns all the time.