Spun Out

The last time I was hanging out with my friend Ned, he told me that I have a Dad sense of humor—that despite the fact that I am relatively young, and childless, my jokes are heavily laden with the kind of corny wordplay one expects from a wacky dad. “Not that that’s a bad thing,” Ned added. “Dads are funny.” I tried to refute Ned’s Dad Humor theory, but later on that day the following conversation transpired.

Me: “Could I have a sip of your Fresca?”

Heather: “Yes.”

Me: “You mean, ‘yesca’?”

Heather: “Ned was right.”

I can’t deny it. Lately I’ve been making bad puns at an outrageous pace, and I’m wondering if there have just been more opportunities, or if I’ve reached the age when the Dad Humor gland kicks in and suddenly your brain becomes a pun machine.

Other recent examples: I saw “Hungarian mushroom soup” on a menu and felt compelled to say, “That must be for people who are really Hungary.” When my friend Jen told me that her new boyfriend is really interested in the mining industry and wants to get into it from the ground up, I replied, “You mean from the ground down?” and followed up with, “He must really dig it.” Finally, my friend Wilson forwarded me a news story about a deadly stampede in India that occurred when a politician began giving out free saris. I wrote back that I hope he said he was sari. Wilson replied, “That was Dadesque.”

The strange thing is that my own Dad, while funny, isn’t usually corny. His sense of humor is more Richard Pryor than Rodney Dangerfield. However, the habit of cracking yourself up (another symptom of my affliction) does run in the family, as I confirmed the other day while visiting my grandparents. My 80-year-old grandfather pointed to his white-yet-full head of hair and said, “You know I just started losing my hair a couple years ago? At this rate, in another few years I’m going to look like you.” Then he cracked up while I tried to think of a comeback. What do you say to that? “Yeah, well um... you use a cane!” It’s tough getting roasted by your grandfather.

I was having dinner the other night with my friends Doyle and Kara and Kara’s parents, and I brought up my pun problem, using the mining comment as an example. I didn’t refer to this as Dad Humor, though, out of deference to the actual dad in our midst. I needn’t have worried. When I told Kara’s dad about the mining enthusiast, he replied, “That sounds like a pretty mineless pursuit. I hope he doesn’t get the shaft.” Damn! I should’ve known better than to step to a dad with my Dad Humor. Doyle followed that up with “I hope his shaft doesn’t collapse,” which is clearly more in the perverted-uncle category.

I decided I needed to cleanse myself of the bad-joke habit, and there was only one way to do it: by re-reading the very worst joke book in existence. Dude, Got Another Joke? by Bob Phillips is the most unfunny collection of not-hilarious material ever published. Bob Dole is funnier than Bob Phillips. Ironically enough, this book was given to me by my friend Susan as a joke. Here are the first two one-liners in Chapter One, entitled “Radical Humor”: “I won’t say my house is a mess, but have you ever seen a fly land in a cloud of dust?” And, “If you woke up in the night, what would you do for a light? Take a feather from the pillow; that’s light enough.” All of a sudden, my bad jokes aren’t looking so bad.

The cover of Dude, Got Another Joke? boasts “over 5 million books sold,” so I assume Phillips’ other titles, such as So You Want to Be a Bible Trivia Expert, must be better than this one. But still. Here’s one of his better jokes: “What do you call a girl who lies in the middle of a tennis court? Annette.” Hey, if this guy can sell 5 million books with that kind of crap, maybe I’m in the wrong line of work. Here’s one I just made up: “What do you call a girl with no arms and no legs lying on a bun? Patty.” I should have a book.

I’ll need more material, though. Maybe I’ll get in touch with Kara’s dad and see if he’s available to help co-author Dad Humor Vol. 1. I could send him a fax, but I’m sure he’d probably prefer that I page him. ∂