Last Tuesday I walked in the door and the first thing I hear is "I don't think anything is broken".

The Wife and our two Tax Deductions were standing around the kitchen table, all of them looking at me as if I'd just caught them planning a bank robbery. I stood in the door without shutting it, because when you hear "I don't think anything is broken" as soon as you walk in the door, you want to make sure you have an escape route.

I kept hoping the dog would bark so I'd have an excuse to go out in the yard. If only that unhelpful dog would've had a thorn in her paw I could've killed a good hour or two while the "I don't think it's broken" soap opera reached a conclusion in the kitchen. Usually, that dog goes into hysterics if so much as a butterfly lands on our property, but today - when I really needed her help - she stood mute, wagging her tail in quiet contentment. Of course, later in the evening, this alleged dog would pick up the trail of a deer that trotted through the yard a week ago and bark like a busted sprinkler. 

After giving up any hope of being spared, I summoned the courage to ask, "what is it you think isn't broken?".

TD#1 hobbled over to me and held up her foot. It was purple and the size of a canned ham.

"How did that happen?" I asked. 

"A chair fell on it," she said. 

"Have you been moonlighting with a moving company?" I asked. "How does a chair end up turning your foot into a football?"

I don't have enough space or medication to recount, dissect or explain TD#1's answer. The crux of the biscuit is TD#1 was talking to The Wife, and while doing so was standing next to the chair. Being a goofy teenager she was leaning the chair left to right with her hand while she was talking. At some point, the chair apparently made a run for it, slipped out of her hand and landed on her foot.

"First of all, your nickname is now and forever The Chairman," I said. "Secondly, do you think it's broken?"

Neither The Wife or The Chairman thought the foot was broken, but I wanted to be sure. The best way to make TD#1 leave the room in a hurry is to deliver a bad pun. I love puns more than honey buns, but TD#1 hates them. My plan was to wait until the 8 p.m. hour to unleash a couple of puns an attempt to see if she could walk on her injured foot that was now resembled a mangled toaster oven.

Later that evening as we were watching an episode of Columbo, TD#1 asked The Wife what was available for a snack. At that moment a candle on the table next to me inspired the first pun of the night.

"You can have this candle over here," I said holding it up. "It's a light snack."

"I hate that!" TD#1 said with her blanket pulled up over her head. "Stop!".

A few minutes later Columbo ended (he busted Leonard Nimoy by the way), and a show called Collector's Corner came on. The episode featured a guy who was a Lego collector.

"You know, Lego collecting is a snap," I said proudly. 

The next thing you know, a tall, skinny person with a blanket pulled over her head and a foot the size of a bread box ran out of the living room, begging me to stop. She even made a constant droning "AAAAHHH!" noise to prevent any further pun-age from entering her consciousness. It seems her foot wasn't broken after all. 

I really want TD#1 to wrestle "The Chairman" nickname away from Frank Sinatra, because, well, he doesn't need it anymore. Also, TD#1 is going to outgrow her tax deduction status in a few short years, and we must be prepared with a new nickname. If "The Chairman" nickname doesn't stick, my only other option is "Tall Person Who Eats All of Our Food and Drops Furniture on Herself", which would make for a cumbersome business card.

Jon Dawson's humor columns are published weekly by Neuse News. Contact Jon at jon@neusenews.com or www.jondawson.com.