My Family's Obsession.....er, Hobby

To understand a preoccupation that my family has, you must first understand my family. They love word puzzles, clever comebacks, logic games...and PUNS! We can't get enough PUNS. So, we often spend many hours of our family gatherings trying to out-pun, out-joke, and outsmart one another. You also must understand that many of the cousins, aunts, and uncles almost pride themselves in telling DUMB jokes, so outsmarting each other isn't always such a difficult thing to do.

I don't exactly know when our family's long-running hobby started, but quite a few years ago, I tried to introduce a new game for us to think about. Little did I know that we would continue to think about these to this day, at least 8 years later. Each time I go home, it never fails that I hear a new one of these....or a long re-hashing of some of our favorites we thought of some time ago.

So, you're wondering....what in the world am I talking about? Well, I'll do my best to describe it. The object: Think of a sentence or question that is generally focused on a topic. The end of the sentence must include the specific item of focus. However, the second part of that item must be a person's first name. Confusing, right? The best way to show you what I mean is to just provide a few tried and true examples.

What's that on the front of your cap, Bill? (cap bill)
Can I borrow a dollar, Bill? (dollar bill)
That platypus sure looks like a duck, Bill. (duck bill)
Can I have the program for the play, Bill? (play bill)

I purposely provided a few with Bill so that I wouldn't ruin the fun that you might have in finding other names that will fit into sentences like these. Still don't understand? Here's another oldie and a goodie:

Someone has placed a rug in front of your door, Matt. (door mat)

Hopefully, you get the point. Well, now you see the ridiculousness in our obsession (or hobby, as we like to call it.) But, we're always trying to find sentences that fit into this puzzle.

There's also the tendency to come up with sentences and questions that don't work at all and don't follow the rules of the game. I've been known to make a loud buzzing sound (Urrrrrh WRONG!) when hearing one of these types, and Uncle Dick gets a real kick out of that. He usually laughs more loudly at me than he does at the sentence puzzles. But there are a few rare occasions when two of my cousins (David and Stephen) will try to so hard to be included in the fun, that their odd suggestions are so off-base that they're just downright funny (at least to my cousins, my uncles and my father.) While these aren't two of the most ridiculous, these are two that will go down in infamy:

What kind of bird is that hooting out in your barn, Al? (barn owl)
How long is that piece of tape, monsieur? (tape measure)

(Clarification: The second sentence above was disqualified because monsieur is not a name. But what make it so funny is that my cousin had no idea how to correctly pronounce the French word. But, he was so excited about thinking of it and was sure it was a "winner" that he called my family's house at 1:00 a.m. because he couldn't wait until we woke up in the morning to share! Regardless of not fitting exactly into the puzzle rules, we sure give him an A for his effort.)

Can you think of any sentences or questions that are like this? BEWARE! If you're the type to like puzzles like us, this can be extremely addictive!