My dad was always fun when I was a kid. He’d watch cartoons and kiddie movies with me and my brother and laugh or scream along with us. He took us out on nature hikes and showed us weird bugs and explained what they were. But I think the thing he was best at was modifying songs for our amusement. Once, when I was about 5, I was playing in the rec room, picked up a toy and a silverfish ran out from under it. I’d never seen one before and ran screeching to my dad, who allivieated my fear by telling me that I was more scared than I was, then he whipped up a song to the tune of Silver Bells:
Silverfish
See them swish
It’s buggy time in the city
This of course got me laughing, and I wasn’t scared of them anymore.
A few years later, when I was about 10 or 11, I heard Silver Bells for the first time, and I was convinced that someone had ripped off my dad’s original song!
Really cute! I giggled right along with the Silverfish song; your dad sounds great.
When I was five, we were swimming in a hotel pool. My father was pretending to be a shark to amuse me, and I asked my father what its name was. There were metres along the side (to denote how deep the pool was). So, the shark was Meters the Shark.
You were more scared than you were? Was your father into quantum mechanics, or philosophy? Great song either way. And XMess is coming! Yay! No I can annoy my friends and relatives with that one, too…
As for making me laugh, when I was a wee tad I got the blowing-on-the-belly-to-produce-a-rude-noise a lot, I think in some places it’s called a Zerbert, but after a while I was actively encouraged to entertain myself. Not ignored by any stretch of the imagination, but, well, dad was in grad school and mom had to work, so I had a lot of unsupervised fun.
Of course, they also played Firesign Theatre records at me from pretty much the get go, so I already had a pretty unique sense of humor.
I remember once when my sister and I were around 6 and 10 years old, and for some reason we got it into our heads that we wanted to go to a diner for lunch. Of course, in those days, my folks did not have 2 cents to spare, and besides, we only had one car, which dad used to go to work. So logically, a diner was completely out of the question. Mom turned the kitchen table sideways so it stuck out into the room like a diner booth, put on her apron and took our orders for PB&J, baloney sandwich, whatever it was. We said we wanted chocolate milk, and she pretended to call an order in for “two brown cows” to the kitchen. We giggled and told her she was being silly, but we had a good time.
I don’t know if my grandfather ever actually did this. He would tell me that when I was a toddler he would put molasses on my fingers and give me a feather.
I always thought it was a joke about keeping a simple person entertained.
It got to be an inside joke. When one of us would see someone who had trouble staying out of his own way, one of us would say “He needs a feather.”
I’ve got a great one, but it wasn’t my parents, it was my older brother and my cousin. I hope that the conditions of the OP leaves enough latitude for this story…
We were visiting my cousin in New Jersey when I was six. My brother told me that my cousin had a secret spaceship hidden under his bed, and at night he would go on a cruise around the solar system. I refused to believe this of course, despite my brother’s repeated cajoling. When my cousin heard the story, he told me with a straight face that it was absolutely true, and furthermore, he would prove it by taking me on a romp through the solar system in the spaceship before our visit was over.
When the family went sightseeing the next day, bro and cous stayed behind and converted the space below his bed into a would-be spaceship. That night, after lights out, my cousin crawled into the spaceship and I crawled in after him. We pulled the “door” shut (it was a board across the side of the bed to block out the view of his room,) and proceeded on our journey. Bro stayed outside, where he grabbed the bed and rocked it back and forth during “Takeoff”. Cous had a “Viewscreen” where he showed me the planets we were passing (really just still pictures of planets inserted into a mylar bag taped to the side of a box.) Back outside the “ship”, bro provided sound effects for the alien spaceships flying by, and visual effects by waving flashlights around the edge of the “door”.
They had carefully scripted out the entire adventure, including a hostile alien ship which attacked us, necessitating our quick return to the bedroom. Cous and I emerged from the “ship” only to find that the entire family had gathered in the doorway to watch. They all still talk about that.
This reminds me of one of my mom’s favorite stories about me when I was a kid. Mom put quite a bit of energy into keeping me entertained on long car trips. When I was two or three we were travelling from Oregon to Nebraska. She would point out the animals we saw:
“Look, Zag, cows!”
Usually, by the time I stirred from my preoccupation and looked all around, the animals would be out of sight.
“All gone,” Mother would say.
Eventually, I thought I had the game figured out:
“Look, Ma, ehfunt!”
Mom looked around. I laughed “Ah gone!”
When I was older we played endless rounds of twenty questions, which in our family was always called Animal Vegetable Mineral. “Clouds” was won of the stumpers.
While driving down the road, my Dad used to turn around and talk to us in the backseat. We would all be freaking out and yelling “Dad, watch the road”. Later, we figured out that my Mom was steering the car while he did this.
My Dad was a character in general, though. Once he was working on the hot water heater and it blew up. Knowing my Mom would come running, he quickly hung himself upside down from the tree.
Growing up in Toledo, Ohio, we’d frequently drive to Cedar Point in the summer. Back then, the way to get there was mostly rural farmland. We’d drive by a pig farm (well I think it was a pig farm–it stunk soooo bad) and without fail, my mom would say, “Smell that fresh country air!”
When we went to the beach we would all swim in the waves together. One of our favorite games was “Polaris Missile”, where my Dad would launch himself from below the surface of the water and splash us all. We thought it was hilarious.
As a child of 5 or 6 I remember driving home from my grandmother’s house. It was night and the moon was out. I don’t remember why, but I started talking to it as if it were a real being and my dad provided the voice for the moon. We had a whole conversation, me and the “Moon” about why he came out at night and why he went behind clouds and that sort of thing, all the while I’m sure my dad was just grinning ear to ear as he did the moon voice.
My mom and I loved to watch <i>Lassie</i> reruns together when I was a kid; she’d watched them during her own childhood and I loved dogs, so it was a show we both enjoyed. However, I quickly realized that the show was just too damn formulaic. Timmy managed to get rescued every damn time, and I thought it would be funny if Lassie just left him in a well or a cave to rot and die. (I was a morbid little kid, what can I say…)
My mom would whistle the theme song, and while she was whistling I’d yell “Lassie! <i>Lassie!</i> Where are you? Why won’t you come baaaack?!” Even now I can’t hear that theme song without cracking up.
Leave Timmy to rot and THEN die? Now that’s a horrible fate.
These stories are so cute. Dragwyr, I can only imagine your dad’s “Moon voice”.
My mom is notorious for spoonerisms - when you accidentally mix up the first letter of one word with another - so she’d purposely read me spoonerized fairy tales to make me laugh. The only one I still remember a bit was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. She’d start it off:
“Once upon a time there were bree tears, and they all lived in a hig bouse in the fiddle of a morest…”
My mother and I used to play War when I was little. She told me when I was like 17 that when we’d play, she’d always put her high cards at the bottom of her deck so when we had a war, I’d win all the high cards and be happy. Of course, this also made the game go much faster, which was a plus for her.
Two things that stick out are something my Aunty used to do, and something my Dad did.
As a kid I spent a lot of time at my Aunty’s during the summer, as my parents worked full time. When my cousins woke up on a morning we would come downstairs and find a treasure map. Solving clues and following the map lead to biscuits. It was great fun, and kept us quiet until she woke up.
I’ll have to tell you about my Dad later. Got to go…
