Us dads have some annoying habits. Mostly it has to do with the stupid stuff we say to our kids.
I remember someone telling me once about their dad, who worked crossword puzzles all the time, a vocabulary nut. The kid was at the kitchen table working on his vocabulary test and yelled out, “What’s a commentator?” From the living room, came the answer,
“A commentator is any plain, old potato.”
What did YOUR dad used to say that was funny or annoying?
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I sort of have two dads, not in the sense that Heather has two mommies, but my “real” dad died 25 years ago. He was not a funny man, and “annoying” would be a mild word for his brand of repartee. He focused mainly on how smart he was compared to me, although to this day I can’t remember more than one smart thing he ever did or said.
My second dad is a very funny man. He used to have several new jokes every time we went over to visit him. Now he’s either too old to remember jokes, or being retired, he just doesn’t hear many jokes in the course of his day. His real talent though is as an ad lib man.
To pick one, we were having a family dinner at Claim Jumper one evening and the waitress asked how much my son weighs.
My dad asked, “Why? Are you going to cook him?”
It turns out that at Claim Jumper, they charge kids, not by age, but by weight.
Reminds me, –as a dad–, one of my favorite things to do is when someone has their grade school kids with them, I will ask: “Tommy, do Mommy and Daddy still fight like they used to?” Over the years, I have gotten some “kids say the darndest things,” comments back, much to the chagrine of dad. One even told me, that yes, they still fight, and he and his brother can hear every word through the heat vents.
Oh, by the way, I told my twentysomething, raised in suburbia, daughter the above ‘commentator’ joke, and she responded JUST LIKE SHE ALWAYS DOES to my jokes: “I don’t get it,” she says.
Humor seems to be the key element to being remembered fondly—my own father when faced with my sophomoric antics helped smooth it over with my mother, and she chose the bad cop approach.
Looking back
I remember my father laughing so hard he cried—-now that’s living…
My father-in-law loved to joke and kid. Between the two of us, we had some really fun (and often, silly) back-and-forth sessions. His favorite saying, whenever he appeared to be losing the exchanges (which was often), was to threaten to “git after me wit’ a baseball bat”. He even had one handy, “just in case”.
My usual response was, “yeah, but ya gots to catch me first!” (He walked with a cane.)
He was definitely a piece of work!
My dad was a good guy but anytime I had to do something I didn’t want to do he would say “It won’t kill ya.” Ugh.
Rhea…”It won’t kill ya”…good one. Similarly, I used to tell my son, who seemed like he was constantly being hurt in sports to “shake it off.” I am not at all sure what that meant, even.
My dad said “If you sleep on the floor, you never have to worry about falling out of bed.”
[...] (This story was prompted by the question posed by GL Hoffman over at What Would Dad Say, where he asks for a response to his question, “What did your dad say?” Why not share the wealth? Pop on over and contribute something! And yes, your father will know. He always knows.) [...]
When I was about 5, I had some inconsequential problem that seemed like the end of the world to me. When I asked my Dad whether he had ever had this problem, he had to admit to me that he never had. He told me that he wasn’t born until he was seven, so he didn’t know what to think!
I was so distracted wondering how my Dad was seven years old when he was born, that I forgot my other problem…
Liz…I am thinking your dad was trying to confuse you. I still can’t figure out what he meant. Did you? Ever? I guess his comment is true, however. Dads, huh?
Conrad…I hear you. My dad used to tell kids who were about 6 or so, that they would turn into the opposite sex when they hit their next birthday…telling them how he used to be a little girl even. I can still remember the look of panic on little boys..
No way GL–now I have to read this stuff everyday or I will miss something good.
What a great idea———-my uncle will live on in me.
I used to love to watch The Flintstones on tv when I was little and my Dad watched it with us too. When something good happened for whatever reason it was at the moment, my Dad would say, “yaba daba doo.” It was funny. My Mom was always busy at her job so I would clean their bathroom and my Dad told me that it was so clean, “he was going to marry me.” I always loved to do yardwork even as a kid. My Dad was a fireman so when he got home from work the next day, he would see that I cut back the ivy and watered and he would tell me that the yard looked so good, “he was going to marry me.” My husband doesn’t say a thing to me when I clean the bathroom now or do the yard work!!! What is up with that!!!!
My dad gave me these tremendous nuggets of wisdom when he would say to me, “Kevin, you show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” He also told me, “Kevin, life is not about winning and losing – it’s about winning.”
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title What Would Dad Say. Thanks for informative article
My father-in-law had tons of “truisms” for my children. We would visit the California coast and he would call the huge rocks with seagulls on them “crapatoriums” (you know, the ones all white on top?). He was a great guy, died a year ago Sept. 9. My mother had more to say than my father, because he didn’t live with us. She would tell me to “hold your horses” all the time and I’d remind her that I didn’t own a horse, but she wouldn’t stop saying it and she never bought me that horse to hold. She also knows how she shouldn’t comment on my hair because its my business and she will say as much, then she will comment on my hair! Some moms make great dads.
Hi Mad…thanks for stopping by. Man, that “hold your horses” was all too common at my house too. My mom used to ALWAYS say, it reminds me now, every time I would say Where is the whateverithappenedtobe at? She would always say between the a and the t. It was her way of telling me, again and again, never to end a sentence with a preposition.
So after posting, I pondered as to why I didn’t give my father any credit for saying anything of merit and “poof!!” it hit me. When I was 8 he was watering his back yard with a hose and we had a “father/daughter talk” where he told me I should start thinking about wearing a bra. I think I actually still had a sunken chest at the time, but since he didn’t live with us, it was his best shot to be as ‘dadlike’ as possible when he had a chance. Now that I am grown (in so many ways), I think he was concerned that I would end up with a rack like my mother and he wanted to get it under control as soon as possible. Thank goodness, I don’t think of him every time I put on a bra AND I don’t have mother’s rack, either…
I bumped into this website by coincidence and decided to post. I guess it’s way to late, but what the heck?
I just wanted to share my dad’s logic about grocery shopping. He will buy something he knows nobody will like, not even himself (for example some terrible polish crackers he bought the other day) and then when I ask him why, his reply is always “Because it will last longer.”
Then most of the time he ends up taking whatever it is he bought to work and give it to the guys there, they’ll eat anything.
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