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.”
Pensamiento es un libro para aquellos que disfrutan explorando las preguntas más frecuentes de la vida.
El libro es llena de preguntas tan serias como, “¿Cuántas mentiras hacen que una persona sea mentirosa?” y tan tonto como, “¿Por qué la grasa sabría bien?”
A pesar del nivel de gravedad las preguntas se seleccionan para fomentar la creatividad del lector. Algunas preguntas dentro de este libro animarán idealmente al lector a hacer más preguntas. Si el conocimiento está estancado y el aprendizaje es dínamico, ¿no deberíamos hacer más preguntas?
Pensamiento mantiene la experiencia dinámico.
…………………………………….
Pensamiento is the Spanish version of Ponderous. It’s a great way to enjoy the profound questions of Ponderous in another language.
There is a misconception among most of us regarding allergies. Specifically: most of us don’t want them. We think we know everything, so we assume the allergies will make us miserable, coughing, sneezing, itching, and scratching. Usually, it’s how anybody reacts to their allergies, so it’s not an unfounded assumption.
A few people in our communities have the idea down much better. These people are old, retired men and women, and their favorite joke concerning allergies is: “I’m allergic to work.”
Which, of course, is a line of thinking we all should adopt. We need to pick up some allergies just for fun.
“I’m allergic to fear.”
That’s number one on a lot of people’s lists. If only the fear was something you avoided because it would make you break out in hives, then you wouldn’t be susceptible to the “must-worries” the mass media wants you to accept. They want us to fear the future of the planet, the future of the monetary system, the future of transportation—and of course the present day of all these things as well. What if, though, what if you looked at it all and said, “I don’t want the itchy eyes from this garbage, so I refuse to watch.” If so, the fear-mongering and fear-manufacturing would take hold on fewer people. It might even lose power and die.
Maybe even more powerful still would be if we wished for death allergens.
“I’m allergic to death. I’d rather not partake in that whole last meal thing. I might break out in sneezes and wheezes.”
It just might work. Let’s try it.
Another one, similar to the death allergen is the illness allergen. Can a person decide not to be sick? Can anyone will themselves well? If anyone made a claim to be allergic to sickness aloud, would it have any influence on the influenza?
There are as many food allergies as there are varieties of food, so having a food allergie isn’t so unbelievable. If there’s any food you don’t actually like, you can always say you’re allergic to it. Only the most crazed psycho would still expect you to eat it if you’re allergic to it.
On that same topic, anything you don’t enjoy can be something you claim gives you hives. Being subjected to some music you abhor? Be allergic to it. Low quality cinema? Develop an intolerance. Intolerance isn’t reserved for lactose and gluten. Got a friend who says stupid things? Claim an allergy. (Not to the friend, to the stupid things.) What if you don’t even like a certain color of paint? Of course you can be allergic to that too.
So, if something is looking unappealing to you, start acting like even the proximity of it makes you itch and swell.
And if the ploy works, be sure to thank an old, retired person.
One of the most fascinating, and possibly most ridiculous, consequences of hyper-culture is when pieces of culture get shared with ostensibly the wrong people. Dutch dreadlocks? Australians with a hunger for cajun food? Young white boys with lines shaved in their eyebrows? Romanians celebrating Cinco de Mayo?
None of the borrowing or sharing is wrong any more than it was before technology made the sharing much faster. Consider the sharing of cultures by people who traveled collecting souvenirs. Russian nesting dolls, or Eiffel Tower miniatures, for instance. However, it does get ridiculous when every day is a holiday, or a remembrance day, or a pride-of-existence day for someone or some thing.
Because of the interconnectedness of everyone in the world we now have “International Dacha Day” even though dachas aren’t an international item. We also have everything from “Antique Day” to “Zippo Day”.
Some of these aren’t half bad. I can adore a day set aside for grapes, but I’d rather not know about a day for raisins. Raisins don’t need a day of their own. That’s only my opinion, of course. There’s probably someone who wants to celebrate “Raisin Day”, and it’s probably the same person who would celebrate “Prune Day”.
There’s a day for Star Wars, but it has more to do with a pun than the actual movies.
There are multiple Star Trek days, including the day of the first interracial kiss on television on November 22nd. How do you celebrate that particular day?
There’s Ant Man Day and Batman Day and Spider Man Day. All those? What about the women?
Well, for women there’s Women’s History Month (March).
There’re also a few fun days like “High Heel Shoe Day” or “Nail Polish Day”, although that last one is one that a few misguided dudes want to steal from the women. Just let the women have it.
Along with the fun ones, there are a lot of days devoted to women’s health. Most of these have the word Awareness injected in the middle of them. Hopefully the campaign is working.
Other than the days for men and women, the most observed days are the days revering food.
So many of these food days are superfluous. Some folks celebrate “Donut Day” every day. “Why bother having only one?”
That reasoning goes with anything. If it’s important to you, why wait? Or if it’s on someone else’s calendar, you can still observe it your way. Thirsty for water, but it’s “International Skunk-mouth Beverage Day”? Have that glass of water, and have a tall one.
Xenosthesia.com 