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once in a while. And she’ll say, ‘Did you see the pun in this?’ I like to think that I'm teaching people at the same time I'm sending these out, they start looking for them and they'll send me one.”
There is a larger pun-loving community, but Shores said it’s more focused on off-the-cuff pun creations rather than collections like his. The most famous competition is the O. Henry Museum Pun-Off World Competition in Austin, Texas. There are two categories at the pun-off, with one allowing two minutes to craft a pun on a given topic and the other a rapid-fire battle between two contestants.
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“They’ll invite people who are known punners to compete against each other,”
Shores said. “I would love to either attend one — I don't think I'm good enough to participate, but I have dabbled in trying. I see a headline, and I say, ‘Well, I would’ve said it this way.’”
There’s no end in sight for Shores, and he plans to keep adding to his collection as long as he can. One day he hopes to give his collection to a nephew who’s interested in language and humor — recently penning an academic dissertation on Japanese humor.
“He's expressed an interest in my collection. He’s somebody that's in education, he's into humor, and so when you're talking puns, you're talking humor, this is fun to see a different slant to words. So, I think he may end up with this,” Shores said.
The pun collection is just one of many hobbies Shores has. He also collects postcards, shot glasses, stamps, sheet music and 3-D wooden puzzles.
Editor’s note: In what appears to be a shameless attempt to get his article added to Shores’ collection, the writer of this article, Jack Harvel, conveniently found a way to include a pun in the story’s headline. He’s well known for punny headlines such as this around the Source Weekly.
