things move around

There’s a bloke at work called Larry (say) Au-Yeung. ‘Au-Yeung’ is pronounced ‘Ow-Yung’, so it’s really no leap at all to get from there to a pun so painfully obvious that even I wouldn’t normally bother. However, I’ve not given up hope of penetrating the forcefield of literalism by which Grent isolates himself from the rest of the world, so this morning I thought I’d try the sledgehammer where the stiletto had failed:

Me: Grent. ‘Ow young d’you think Larry Au-Yeung is?
Grent: How young is Larry?
Me: Yeah. ‘Ow young is Au-Yeung?
Grent: I don’t know, I’d say around 45.
Me [despondently]: Really? I thought he looked younger.

It’s not just that he doesn’t get my bad puns. The man is a phenomenon. He’s 100% left-brain - a left-brain on legs. Imagine a man possessed of limitless creativity, perceiving the world in forms inconceivable to ordinary minds (since do so would melt them) yet lacking any appreciation of conventional form and stricture, entirely divorced in his mind from logic and process, unable to communicate his revelatory vision. Sort of like the late-period Roky Erickson I suppose. Grent is that man’s diametric opposite.

UPDATE: I should clarify that the above pun was made for purely experimental purposes. It was a terrible pun in conception and execution and not at all the sort of pun I would inflict on an ordinary, sensitive human being.