Pine nuts: Ecumenical pun pledge
Man can be awful cruel to man, and from time immemorial we continue to come up with new ways to exact our cruelty. The first novel ambush that caught my attention was described in the Odyssey, where Greek soldiers were able to take the city of Troy by hiding inside a giant horse parked at the city gates as an offering to the goddess Athena. What a surprise those soldiers of Troy had when they laid down their weapons to cheer and hug that humongous Trojan Horse. I was ten years old when I first read that story, and did not trust a horse for several years after…
Some ambuscades do not fare as well as the Trojan Horse. Mark Twain describes such a failed episode in one of Fennimore Cooper’s books…
“Chingachgook is able to divert a stream and uncover moccasin tracks! He bends a sapling in the form of an arch over this narrow passage. The Indians hide in the arch and wait for a 90-foot scow, moving at one mile per hour. The first Indian that drops lands in the wheelhouse in the very stern of the scow. The other five have a full minute to drop and all five drop astern of the scow into the water!”
But all the skullduggery in recorded history pales compared to the most recent advance in electronic sabotage. Some evil mastermind figured out how to load pagers, walkie-talkies, and hand-held radios with explosives that when detonated, drop their users like stones.
So what will we weaponize next? How many different ways can we conceive to dispatch one another? Well, there is a more natural demobilizing weapon that is most effective, though often overlooked, and it’s called, a pun. A good pun, or better yet, a bad one, can become an epiphany to an innocent interloper, and upgrade his disposition without harming him.
So, my proposal is that all 195 countries in the world sign a treaty pledging to employ lighthearted puns in place of the heavier pursuits of war. This will cut the killing fields in half, and perhaps more, as there will be those lucky ones who will not try to understand a pun, and in feeling superior, will live a satisfied life ever after…
Now, if you doubt that this Ecumenical Pun Pledge will work, let us try a quick test on you, and find out if you don’t feel comforted, and above entertaining any thoughts of violence whatsoever…
This is what I’m having for dinner tonight…
There! You see? If you figured it out you will feel grateful and benign, and if you don’t care to figure it out, well, you will feel peerless, and too erudite to harbor any thoughts of cruelty for the balance of a long and productive life…
I shall spend tonight drawing up our Ecumenical Pun Pledge, and shall get it in the mail to 195 countries first thing in the (Drumroll Please!) mourning…
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