No one knows with any certainty how language started in the dawn of human life. Primitive humans probably grunted a lot and gesticulated to convey what was on their minds. Over eons those grunts morphed into regular sounds recognizable by those within the same family groupings. Sounds would slowly grow into what we would call “words.”

Communication with another human is one of the more sophisticated things that happened for us as humans. As groups of families as tribes began to roam outside their familiar lands into landscapes beyond the horizon they must have encountered other tribes of families. In time those things common to both tribes, tools, water, food, and family, would grow into shared words.

Eventually words became crucial in the life of an individual. At its simplest levels it meant understanding one another. In the extreme it was a matter of life or death. To grow from an infant crying as the sole means of communicating one’s needs to speaking as an adult in complex sentences to communicate ideas is indeed a marvel.

For one special group of self-styled linguists and lovers of words, words are more than just communication. They are keys to a world of the abnormal, to fields unbounded, and to the headwaters of things wild and ingenious. To this group words opened realms the source of inspiration and dreams.

I believe this is where “puns” come into the picture. A deft play on words is masterful; it is at once a reflection of intelligence and childhood playfulness in a delicious mixture to enchant one’s mind. The jokes in this book were a continuation of the playful ventures of the author on a social media website and resulted in some wild and crazy alternate views of our world. My mind dwells in this realm much of the time.

I love the power of words. I enjoy sweet memory traces stirred by a single word that opens the now dusty corridors of my inner past. I love playing with the words in the daily “Jumble” in the local paper. My grandchildren are intrigued with puns because of the surprise element within them. Their fertile minds are open to the subtly of word plays, and the exciting thing for me is that they seem to understand them.

I hope your trek through the pages of this volume, third in the series, will provide you with some delight, and in a word the “defining moment of your day.”

Gordon H. Nagai ~ Eugene, OR ~ Summer 2014