The Danger of Homonyms

I belong to this Yahoo Group called NSExplore and they talk about historical Nova Scotia stuff and geocaching and geographical stuff and a lot of it can get pretty dry. This week they've been talking about what are some of the highest points in Nova Scotia and the lowest points in Nova Scotia and the fact that Windsor is actually below sea level and if a hurricane went through there the town would flood just like New Orleans did - and that seems to be a quite typical behaviour of Acadian settlers of olden times - to farm and settle in areas below sea level because the soil was so good for farming and for grazing animals.

So I piped in with my own post which said:

All this talking about above sea level and below sea level and dykes and stuff has brought to mind something from my childhood - I grew up in Amherst
Nova Scotia which is right next door to the Tantramar marshes - and I have no
idea how I learned this from a very tender age but I always thought this was
hilariously funny - and I knew from a young age the double entendre of it too
- but even when I was a kid Iused to say - "do you know that Amherst wouldn't exist except for dykes?" I used to think that was HILARIOUS! Please excuse my vulgarity. But man, I used to think that was funny. And I'm a woman, too.

What is REALLY funny is that everyone who responded to my post took it literally and started talking about dykes - the kind that that are mounds of dirt that keep water from breeching a community. I re-read my original post and it seemed unmistakable to me what I was talking about. I guess that sometimes I really do only amuse myself. But I certainly do HIGHLY amuse myself. I've been saying that phrase since I was about 12 and it still makes me laugh uncontrollably.

I blame my father for my very sick sense of humour.