Premium, Highly Unappreciated Dad Jokes
Aaron Sharp | April 14, 2021
One of the surprising things about parenting is how monotonous things get. This might seem counterintuitive, after all with our quartet of Sharpnadoes one never knows what kind of craziness the day will hold, but often the craziness is repetitive. There is never a dull moment, but often the non-dull moments can leave you with a sense of serious déjà vu.
Sure, two small girls trying to pull each others hair out is in one sense excitement, but when it happens every day it can be, not just tiresome, but a little boring. At least when the three-year-old Slugger decides to wear his underwear on his head he gets points for originality if not degree of difficulty.
In order to combat some of the repetitive nature of parenting I have taken to directing comments toward my children that are pop-culture references that they have never heard before. I hope that one day they’ll be watching a movie and suddenly they’ll realize that one day, long before they were born, I was actually cool. Okay, I was never really all that cool, and I am under no illusion that they are listening well enough to even remember any of these things. The truth is that part of the reason for this approach is to keep myself entertained, and a little more intellectually engaged as I try to pull a quote my the recesses of my brain. I don’t know how many times you can have the same conversation about bedtime without losing your mind, but I hope that turning the whole thing into an opportunity to quote 80s movies at least keeps me from pulling my hair out.
Here are a couple of examples.
Back in February the Wonder Woman and I were leaving on a trip for a few days. The day we were leaving Mimi and Opa were coming by to pick up the kids around noon, and by 9 a.m. it was clear that our kids were outside their minds. Knowing that we just had to survive the next three hours, but that 180 minutes can be a long time with four wired children, we called a quick family meeting. Within seconds it became clear that even trying to have a meeting was pointless so I looked at them, and in my most serious dad voice said, “LOOK AT ME. I’M THE CAPTAIN NOW!” The kids didn’t get it, but the Wonder Woman cracked up at my Somali pirate impersonation, and making her laugh is a win in my book.
Then yesterday afternoon I had to go to the back yard and tell kids to stop screaming for least the six or seven billionth time since COVID happened. If my boss ever wants to know why there is a dip in my productivity during the day there’s a decent change it could be traced back to trying to get children to stop screaming in the back yard. I’ve told the kids that our neighbors might call the cops on them, I’ve even threatened to call the cops on them myself, but nothing really seems to stick. This time the screaming was allegedly singing so I told the Slugger that he was “a little pitchy,” and I told the five-year-old Fashionista that, “It’s a no for me dawg.”* I walked away once again having cracked up the Wonder Woman, and with kids who don’t truly appreciate the premium, hand-crafted brand of dad joke that I deliver.
A father’s jokes are not without honor, except in his own house.
*As it turns out non understanding my humor didn’t keep the Fashionista from getting her feelings hurt by my comment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯