Puns run in our family.  We should be farmers… we are all so corny.  Dad was the King of Corn.  But the rest of us drop a niblet here and there.

Now… most people just think puns are simply…. dumb short jokes.  SO NOT TRUE.  Sometimes…. they are not short at all.

Truthfully, the PUN …. also called paronomasia…  is a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings.  It usually does this by by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. (Folks…. I don’t write these definitions…. I just spit ’em back out.)

Anyways.  I truly love a good pun.  Being a ballplayer, one of my all time favorites is…
“I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.”

So here are a few more… that are true to my heart, for one reason or another….

You all know I like a Diet Coke more often than not.  BUT….
Did you hear about the guy who got hit in the head with a can of soda? He was lucky it was a soft drink.

We all know I can be a bit of a Geek.  Computers, and such.  But did you know this?
I started a band called 999 Megabytes — we haven’t gotten a gig yet.

My favorite snacky food these days is a GREAT Pizza from (the now newly-owned) Rizza.  So….
You want to hear a pizza joke? Never mind, it’s pretty cheesy.

Another thing I love is reading books.  But, I am not a very good reader.  Not as bad as a friend of mine though.   He had some bad luck in his own personal library.
Yep…. my friend recently got crushed by a pile of books, but he’s only got his shelf to blame.

I grew up Catholic.  Masses for everything.   Funerals, Weddings.. and everything in between.   This past week I went to a wedding.  It was SO emotional…..
Even the cake was in tiers.

Growing up in Catholic School… you learn a LOT.   For instance.  Do you know how to make Holy Water?….
Boil the Hell out of it.

We had good kids at Catholic School.  But every once in a while… there was ONE rogue customer.  Yep.   We had this kid in my class… and he was possessed.
He was a dyslexic devil worshipper…. and….
he sold his soul to Santa.

Finally for tonight.  A happy note.   I am an animal lover.   I know many of you are as well.
So…   IF you need an ark to save two of every animal…..
I noah guy.

“A smile starts on the lips, A grin spreads to the eyes, A chuckle comes from the belly; But a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, Overflows, and bubbles all around”  —   Carolyn Birmingham

“If every word I said could make you laugh, I’d talk forever…” — Unknown

I mentioned the Kellogg’s Rooster yesterday.  And today, I saw a GREAT commercial produced by Kellogg’s Cereal.

If you haven’t seen it, there are a bunch of women of different shapes and sizes, going for new jeans, and hence, body measurements.  A few of them are not wanting to get measured because they are shapely-ish.  But when the tape measure goes around their waists, the person reads what it says.  Instead of a number in inches….. it says things like “strong” or “confident” or “beautiful”….

I LOVED this.  It tells women they are cool-io…. no matter what their outside appearance may be.

And I am borrowing it.  But the way I am borrowing it…..  isn’t about losing weight…. or eating healthy cereal …. or fitting into jeans…

I am thinking more about when we were kids, and we’d stand in the doorway.   Mom would tell us to stand up straight, and then she would pencil-mark our heights.  We were seen in full view…. and measured…. right there in that door jam.  Polly 3’8″…  or whatever it was.

So now we are as tall as we are going to get… on the outside.  In fact… some of us are headed in the shrinking violet direction.

But I challenge you… and I challenge me… to THIS.

(Not like the Icebucket Challenge… I didn’t like that whole deal… but that is a topic for another night.)

Okay… back to it.  I challenge US to this.

Each and every day…. at the end of the day.. we should stand in that doorway… straight and tall… and make our mark on the wall.  And when you turn around… look closely to see what it reads.

It is just for that day.  AND… that proportion translates into something much different than feet and inches.

See what it says in.…. character.  Does it say…..
kind, compassionate, willing, happy, supportive, honest, confident, productive, caring, loving, funny, clever, flexible, helpful, acquiescent, friendly?
Or does it measure….
mean, angry, impatient, sarcastic, violent, rude, dishonest, unfair, deceitful, malicious….

You get the idea.

Yes.  Perhaps we should get our little pencils and yard sticks out… and take note at the end of each day… just how we measured up where ever we went.

Maybe we should think about how we did.
And tomorrow… stand just as tall…. or taller than we did the day before.

We’ll all be growing again… before we know it.

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”  — Henry Ford