Thursday, October 23 - That's Punny!

 

 

                Two very bored students sat in their chemistry classroom, barely picking up on what the teacher had been saying for the past thirty minutes. Lisa and Ellie were their names, and to put it bluntly, neither of them cared about chemistry in the slightest. As Lisa sat with her cheek propped into her hand, staring absentmindedly at the Smartboard ahead, Ellie pulled out a sheet of lined paper and scribbled a message to her friend. After receiving a slight nudge, Lisa noticed the paper next to her and pulled it in front of her. Written on the sheet was, “This is boring, let’s make class a little more pun.” Lisa smiled at the ridiculously awful joke thrown at her. Lisa knew she had to respond, I mean who could resist such uncreative and simply entertaining silly antics in such a boring room? Just the idea of blocking out the perplexing and aggravating content written on the class board seemed like a great idea, even when puns were involved.

                Lisa took her pencil and scrawled comeback on the line below her friend’s terrible attempt at a joke. This was going to be war. Ellie received the new message and looked to see what her best friend had come up with. “You really aren’t punny, you know that? In fact, I’d say you belong in this humdrum class. Do you know why? You’re more of a boron than the actual element.” Ah, a double pun, and one that relates to their immediate situation as well. Not bad Lisa, not bad. The joke was so lame, that it probably out-lamed her friend’s previous attempt. The two caught each other’s eye and both smiled deviously. “It’s on,” Ellie whispered.

                “Like Donkey Kong,” Lisa promised.  Now, Ellie knew what she had to do. She couldn’t let Lisa out-pun her, what kind of best friend would Ellie be if she let Lisa win out of the good name of their friendship? An awful one! The girl got to work with her next train wreck of an idea. After finishing her writing, she slid the paper in front of Lisa. Swiping the paper closer, the blond read what her friend had written. “Wow, you’re RUTHenium-LESS. However, you do know that if I let you win, then I wouldn’t look as RADium. I will not rest until I have defeated you.” Oh how the tables have turned! Not only a double pun, but a double chemistry pun in chemistry class. Ellie’s sense of irony was enough to twist someone’s mind and send them into a wild fit, running around in circles like some sort of drooling, brain damaged animal. Lisa knew this, so she had to spice things up and be even faster with her lame comebacks. She passed the paper back to Ellie, who sat there trying to make it look like an all-out war wasn’t going down in the back of the classroom. The teacher might notice if they kept looking at each other, teachers are sharp like that.

                Ellie dragged the poor paper back to her when she saw Lisa put her pencil down. “Wow Ellie,” it said, “You’re so SILLY-CON! But your jokes are almost as bad as our school’s grading system, so congrats to you. I didn’t think anyone could possibly achieve that. My puns are made of IRON, so you might as well quit your GALLanTIUM and NOBELium efforts while you still have a chance.” Now she’s done it. This war won’t end now with both of the girls fiercely prove each other wrong. That’s what best friends do anyway. This would continue to go on for as long as it needed to, or until they both got completely and utterly sick at the puns they were making.

                For the next thirty minutes of class, the girls continued to throw pun after pun at each other.

                “I heard Oxygen and Potassium went on a date with each other. Apparently it went OK.”

“Really? I heard that it was Hydrogen and Oxygen! What a HO!”

                “Do you know what is my favorite places to visit are in EUROPium? FRANCium and GERMANIum.”

                “I personally prefer AMERICUm.”

                “I always look at Yttrium and ask Y?”

                “Nitrogen asked Oxygen out to see a movie, but I heard it was a big NO.”

                Literally, this went on for thirty minutes. Thirty. Minutes. Puns were scattered all over the front and back of the paper, accompanied by some scribbles of poorly drawn images used to degrade and make fun of each other. It was all in fun though, maybe too much fun. The two young high-schoolers were now a heaving and giggling mess in the back of the room, and with every teacher’s weird and unexplainable extensive knowledge everything going on around them at all times and probably their extra set of eyes or something, the two blushing and gasping girls were noticed. Marching up to their desks, the teacher snatched up their legacy with a tight scowl and unamused look in her eyes before reading over the messy content on the page. The girls waited in a dead silence as all of their peer’s eyes were glued to them and the older woman in front of them. Finally finishing every completely useless joke on the sheet, the teacher finally looked down at the two. With that incredibly pissed and disappointed “Teacher Look” wiped onto her face, she asked the girls probably one of the worst things an older cliché teacher like her had to ask. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”

                The girls peered over to each other, and sure enough, the next thing to come out of their mouths were something incredibly stupid, yet clever nonetheless. “I was going to make a joke about chemistry,” Lisa smiled.

                “But all the good ones ARGON.”  Ellie finished with a self-satisfied smirk. Of course, the outcome to that was also fairly easy to predict. A class of laughing students, two devilishly clever smiling girls, an incredibly pissed off teacher, and after-school detention for two.

                Later that day, as Lisa and Ellie sat in an empty row at the front of their class, ready to serve their “jail time,” as they liked to call it, Ellie turned to look at her partner in crime. “Sorry if I got us in trouble,” Ellie sighed with an awkward smile.

                Lisa just laughed and shook her head. “It’s alright,” she said. “Besides, no matter what, you’ll always be a BRO- of- MINE.”