As a Funnies editor emeritus, I experienced a shock when I perused Leah Landes’ Funnies article last week. My heart fell, probably to my knees, or at least the bottom of my ribcage.

Landes wrote, “If you’re anything like me, you typically don’t even bother turning to the Funnies page until you have dictionary.com pulled up and at the ready, prepared for whatever big word the Jantzes have made up this time.”

Horror of horrors! My scheme had been revealed, and even worse, it was attributed to the Jantz siblings, my arch nemeses! In one short sentence, Landes had unwittingly disclosed the Funnies page sham that I had perpetrated for years—nay, the sham that I had begun!

She had unveiled the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets of the Funnies page. She had exposed the Watergate of the Funnies page, uncommonly known as Funniesgate. She had opened up the Pandora’s box that would eventually lead to the downfall of the Funnies Institute for Verbosity Elevation (FIVE), which I created for the sole purpose of writing this article.

What could be more important than humor, you ask? Why, improving the vocabulary of the Goshen College hoi polloi, of course!

In laywoman’s terms, Landes had revealed my life’s secret mission: to transform the “Funnies” page into the “Vocabulary” page.

You might be wondering how I kept this vocabulary scheme a secret all these years. However, I had the perfect cover to lead the Lexicon Improvement Experiment (LIE). Who would ever suspect me, an English writing major?

On that note, you are probably wondering how you didn’t manage to detect this conspiracy before. “Wait, Kate Yoder?” you are hypothetically thinking. (Right now! You are thinking it! I am putting the words in your head! Muahahaha!) “Didn’t she write that article last year that had to include a key with 24 Latin phrases in order for anyone to understand it?”

Yeah, mea culpa.

My dream Funnies page would basically be a study guide for the verbal reasoning section of the GRE. Or, at the very least, practice questions for the obsolete SAT analogy exercises.

In my opinion, the optimal Funnies article would include at least seven extremely hilarious analogy exercises like:

“Balmy” is to “Garden of Eden” as “Inclement” is to?

Goshen

Timbuktu

Women’s restroom in the art building

Elephants

So, my dear readers. Are your dictionaries ready? Cuz this Funnies page is gonna get CEREBRAL.