How to deal with friends who always crack bad puns

There's always that one friend, or if you're unlucky, a bunch of them, who has this unshakable urge to come up with mind-numbingly bad jokes on a daily basis. To them, the world is a playground consisting of an abundance of words with different forms of available wordplay opening doors to countless possibilities.

Their way of thinking, however, gets annoying when the jokes are turned vocal with even more cringeworthy deliveries. Now, to preserve your sanity all the while continuing to hang out with them, here are few ways you can cope.

BARGAIN

If you've been friends with one for a long time, you have probably figured out by now the zero effect that the "shut up" and "seriously?" stares have on them. Enter the power of bargaining. This is when you need to lawyer up and reach a settlement with your friend in question. Offer something like agreeing to buy them coffee for the entire week in exchange for them not making puns in that time span. It may be a small price to pay for the greater good. Moreover, you can use this well achieved week off to gather your sanity and brace yourself for the puns that await you.

DISPERSE

While running from your problems has always been ill advised, running away from punny friends is oddly effective. If you know them well enough, you can almost always sense the joke is coming your way just in time to be able to avoid it. So the next time your pun detector lights up -- disperse, run, regroup. Not only will this help you avoid the scarring PTSD of the joke stabbing holes in your sense of humour, but you also get done with a little exercise in the process.

LAUGH AT THEIR JOKE

Believe it or not, this always works. The thing about puns is that its sole purpose is to trigger all the annoying fibres of your body whenever you stumble upon one. So the whole point of it gets ruined with every fit of laughter that you express. Thus it is definitely the kryptonite of all puns, disabling its maker and leaving them with a sense of lost purpose. Moreover, the rarity with which their jokes get greeted with cheers ensures the element of surprise which further leaves them shocked and quite often scarred enough to know better than to continue making similar jokes in the near future.

REPLY WITH A PUN

This is the last straw, and so this has to be the most effective one. Spending so much time around these people will inevitably make you a low-key "punmaster" yourself. So it is better to embrace your lamer side and join in to form united forces in spreading the epidemic further because God knows, you've already been compromised. This not only gives you the satisfaction of making people feel as scarred as you once used to feel, but also solidifies your friendship to one that lasts for life.

However, if none of these seem to work, there's always the option of locking them up in a pun-geon for life. Hah hah.

Veronica Gomes is a socially awkward sophomore. Feel free to trigger awkward encounters by reaching out to her at gomesveronica1997@gmail.com