Those jokes you hear on the street, you know, the ones labeled dubiously as “Dad Jokes,” are anything but. They go something like this: “Why do sharks swim in salt water? Because pepper water makes them sneeze.”
Even if one makes you laugh, even if you hear two and you’re not put off by the puns, good or bad, even if three come at you like bullets from a sandbag gun, they’re not really Dad Jokes. Laffy Taffy Jokes maybe. Boy’s Life Jokes maybe. Not Dad Jokes.
A joke from a dad goes something a little more like this: “Hey, kid, go get me a Phillips head screwdriver from the garage.”
“Who me?”
“What, are your ears painted on? Yeah, you. Go fetch me that screwdriver.”
Kid goes out to the garage and comes scrambling back in, clutching his chest, “Dad, there’s a bear out there!”
Dad cracks up and almost dies laughing. “Don’t worry kid, it’s not alive, it’s stuffed. It’s a new addition for the den.”
That’s dad humor.
Some Dad Jokes are merely lies, prevarications, exaggerations, even fish tales. Such as when you asked your old man why red lights mean stop and he told you it was because of all the blood in the accidents of people who didn’t stop. And then there was that time you asked him why he liked watching hockey so much if it was so hard to see the puck. He claimed to prefer watching the Zamboni clearing the ice, especially if someone happened to throw a rubber chicken out there. He’d ask, “You can see a rubber chicken, can’t you?” And then he wasn’t able to stop himself—he’d have to tell you about the time he saw a whole hockey player get sucked up in the ice grooming machine.
Yeah right, Dad.
Dad Jokes get famous (or is it infamous?) when it comes to their daughters going out on dates.
There’s one father who issues would-be daters an application. “Fill this out, then we’ll talk.” The application is not so much a job application as a background check, and of course it comes complete with legalese at the bottom before the signature. The legalese describes how certain body parts may be forfeited.
Another dad I heard about recently will toss a shotgun shell at the boy who shows up to date his daughter. He’ll smile and tell them, “Those move a lot faster after midnight.”
Still another will welcome the boy into the kitchen—where dear, old Dad has a gun spread out on the table where he’s been cleaning it, and he proceeds to put it back together.
Okay, aside from their sometimes brutal sense of humor, fathers can also have a clever, witty, prankster inside, begging to be set free. A great Dad Prank I heard about was a birthday gift, in which, instead of wrapping the gifts, he decided to cover them with icing then acted as if they were all cake. Can you imagine what a treasure that would be? To lick your new bicycle clean? Or your Teddy bear? It would be a double gift—yummy and fun. Of course, any guests might get tired of waiting to see what the actual gift was under all that sugary icing.
Then there’s the sneaky old man you can’t trust in the kitchen. Anything he offers you is likely a fake. He says it’s hot chocolate? Nope, that’s gravy in your mug. Cream-filled donuts? Nope, they’re full of mayonaise. Want some beef jerky? Nope, he just gave you dog treats.
The same old man will offer you all the ingredients to make a sandwich. All the ingredients will be perfectly normal—except the mayo, which won’t be mayo at all, it’ll be vanilla pudding.
One fictional example of a dad who knows how to do Dad Jokes is the father of Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes. Particularly, the comic strip in which he reads Calvin a bedtime story about “The Disembodied Hand That Strangled People.” Classic version of a Dad Joke. Bill Watterson knows how dads really operate. (I won’t spoil it and tell you how the story goes, or how it ends. Read it for yourself in The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book.)
In the real world I had a friend whose father was missing his pinky. How it got removed from his hand is up for debate. Depending on his mood, he would tell different stories: auto repair accident, hunting accident, hungry fish, alligator, killer bees, snake bite, lawnmower accident, dog bite, a fight with Mike Tyson, or a fight with his wife. But the variety of stories weren’t the only way he joked around. When he met someone for the first time, especially a young person, he would insist they shake hands. Then when the person noticed his hand was unnaturally small, he would twist the handshake at the wrist as if he was surprised himself. He would look at the hand and drop the handshake to look around on the floor.
“Where did it go? I had it a minute ago.”
He’d make a good show of it, holding up his hand so everyone could see the hand was missing the pinky finger. Then he’d act like he was looking under things as if the missing finger rolled under some furniture.
For anybody in on the joke, it could be comical to watch. At times though, a child might not quite understand that the whole production was a joke, and they’d start crying, as if they were to blame. That’s when he would tell them, “Oh, it’s okay, I lost it a long time ago…in a Zamboni accident.”
Xenosthesia.com 