It sounds like other people’s fathers were way more cutesy than mine was. My father is nice in his own way but he is like a character from a David Lynch movie.
Here is one representative line. We lived in a very small town. He came home very late one night. He walked in drunk.
“It looks like we are a one stoplight town now. I got so sick of the other one, I shot the damn thing out.”
(cue laugh track). That was the type of humor that prevailed with him except it wasn’t a joke. They never replaced the stoplight because it wasn’t needed in the first place.
Dad is eating dinner at the moment. I asked him if i could answer for him and he said no. So i am afraid you will have to wait until our morning when he checks the boards again. Sorry, i very much would have liked to answer, but apparently my answer wasn’t good enough
When I was a senior in high school, my dad was heading up a fundraising effort for the A Capella Choir (I was a soprano back in those days) and he kinda, sorta mixed his metaphors to the delight of many. The committee assembled to discuss various events for raising cash, from bake sales to car washes to a spaghetti supper, and on and on.
Prior to the meeting, my dad had been talking to the principal about some contingency plans, and as the number of suggestions slowed, he wanted to let us know that even if we fell short of our goal ($33K) there might be funds available through the school. He *meant * to say that the principal had an ace in the hole, or maybe an ace up his sleeve. What dad said was that Mr. S. had “an ace up his hole.”
My younger brother and I were helping my parents paint their house this weekend, and my father had commented a few times to my brother that he was being a bit sloppy around the windows. When my brother hit another window with the roller, my dad told him a bit more sternly to be careful, and I heard him utter this wonderful gem to himself:
“Jeeze, you buy him books, give him a donkey to ride to school on, and what does he do? Stacks up the books and screws the donkey.”
I confess, when I read it I too thought you were using it as a descriptive phrase, like “wired to the moon” or something.
Two reasons: 1. you didn’t capitalize the username as he does, and 2. it’s the convention - though not the rule - on the SDMB to bold people’s usernames to avoid confusing them with actual words. Hence the confusion.
A couple of years ago I was helping my dad troubleshoot a computer problem and was walking him through a solution and we had the following conversation…
Dad: Where are you getting all this information?
Me: Nowhere, but I have done this a couple of times before.
Dad: Well, you always did have a photogenic memory.
One time I was having dinner with my grandparents, and my grandmother and I were talking about how she always wanted a large family. She said, “I always wanted six sons, and that’s what I got.”
I asked her why she wanted six specifically, and my grandfather said, “Pallbearers.”
This is one of those “you had to be there” but every time I think of it I crack up.
We had just finished Thanksgiving dinner. My step-mom, in addition to being a great cook, cooks a huge amount of food. My dad likes to say she’s cooking for Cox’s Army. Of course, Thanksgiving was the creme de la creme…we had food everywhere, and quite frankly stuffed ourselves silly.
I’m helping her clean up, and (mind you, this is mere minutes after the dinner broke up) and she asks my dad if he’d like to finish off a piece of pie or something.
He said, “Where am I going to put it, Joan, on top of my head?”
I collapsed to the floor. It was just his outrage, his disbelief that she would think he was still hungry. I don’t think I stood up for five minutes…every time I thought I was done laughing, I’d remember the look on his face and how he said it and it would set me off again.
My dad is your typical stern midwestern Knoxian WASP, and part of his schtick was to pretend he didn’t like the dog. so this moment that still cracks me up is one that he doesn’t know that I witnessed:
He’s always had what we jokingly refer to as the “sacred” chair. It’s always on the left side of the lamp. I have no idea why. We all stay off the chair for the most part, but make jokes about it if caught sitting in it. He came through the living room one day to find our Dachshund sitting in the sacred chair, and sang, to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: I see the little Doxie, and she’s sittin’ on my chair; when I make her get down she will no longer be there…
He doesn’t hear well, so he didn’t hear my stifling laughter and running away!
On our many vacations to Maine, my family would drive the Garden State Parkway ‘through’ this cemetery. As we drove by, the following conversation would always take place:
Dad: “How many people do you think are dead in there?”
Me: “All of them, Dad.”
Dad: “Why do they put a fence up around the place?”
Me: “Because people are just dying to get in, Dad.”
Then there was the time Mom decided she wanted to put up curtains. Typically, I would have helped Dad with such a project (Mom does not care for home improvement-type work at all), but I had class that day (college). It was a Friday though, so I went home to check out the new curtains. I walked in the front door, and was greeted by my very flustered Dad yelling, “Put down your goddamn book bag and help me!” Evidently, Mom’s “help” didn’t go over so well…
Not my dad, but my step-grandfather, a short, skinny Jewish guy from Brooklyn, when he was 85 and trying to argue politics with my uncle. (And you have to imagine this in a cartoonishly stereotypical Brooklyn Jew accent, which is how he spoke):
“Made in America, my ashcan! Nuttin’s made in America! Anymore, everything is made in Twy-ann and Kong Konk China! (pause) What? What’s so funny?”
My father frequently answered the interogative: “How are you doing?” with “Pretty good, for an amateur.” I don’t know where he picked it up, I haven’t heard it from anyone else, but I find myself using the same phrase. It’s an instant icebreaker, and consistently gets someone’s attention, breaking through the mundane beginning of the normal conversation with strangers.
Whenever anyone asked my dad “How are you?”- whether it was someone he knew or not- he would ALWAYS answer “Terrible”. Talk about a conversation stopper. He died 4 years ago, and the one of the guys who gave his eulogies mentioned this, and everyone laughed, because they had all been on the recieving end of one of Dad’s "terrible"s.
He had a stroke several years ago, and when he was in the hospital, one of the nurses asked him how he was doing, and when he said “terrible”, she told his doc that he needed prozac. The doc knew him well and told her that’s just the way he was.
