Every day that I eat a cantaloupe, I say "Can't elope, dad's got the car!"
This was one of the first funny images I ever saw on the internet. Some industrious punny grocery store clerk had written that on a sign above the cantaloupes.
When I first saw the image, not only did I smile with inordinate pleasure at the cleverity of the pun, but also was reminded of the first (and really only) time I made out in a movie theatre. The first girl I truly, passionately made out with, shortly after our first kiss was the new kid in school. I wasn't really a new kid, but I had homeschooled my freshman year of high school, so I had shed whatever rep I'd had in Elementary School. That's weird. Do kids have reps? I guess I was just, you know, a fond memory. The shadows of time had wiped away my rough edges. I had been 10, now I was 12. I digress.
Anyways, the movie we were watching was one of the Naked Gun with Leslie Nielsen series. And there was a series of boob puns: hooters, melons, etc. So of course I was reminded by a cantaloupe of how I felt... Disappointed in those puns. There was little cleverness to them. I expect better.
But this one "cantaloupe, dad's got the car." Perfect, it tells a story. Such a wonderful story. Of young love and desperation. Of the wit of Byron and Shelley trapped by the circumstances of wage slavery. Of disapproving elders and secret trysts. And most of all, of the secret knowledge that lovers share of deep down senses of shared humor.
May your love be as dangerous and bold as the cantaloupe's.
