Holy crap - my Dad always did the same exact thing whenever we encountered a horrible farm smell (or dead skunk in the middle of the road - a favorite song as a kid, btw - and Dad would always turn that up for me when it came on the radio)! Dad was originally from Michigan, though, not Ohio.
Dad also like to say words in a funny way to make us laugh - like calling a sandwich a “sang-y”, for instance. I can’t think of any more right now, but he had lots of them. He also gets credit for introducing me to Monty Python & Fawlty Towers when I was a kid, and letting me play his Bill Cosby records until I had them memorized. In fact, I look back now & laugh that he not only gave in to my request for a Cheech & Chong album when I was a kid, but didn’t say one word when my brother & I would recite some of the dirtier routines without a clue of what they meant. I mean, my dad far more resembles the dad from “My Three Sons” than the one from “Family Ties.”
Do grandparents could in this thread? I’d frequently spend summers with my grandparents, who came up with interesting ways to keep me entertained…
Endless games of Scrabble
My grandfather was working on a geneaology at the time, which involved fair bits of travel to fun and exciting places like town halls, libraries and cemetaries (actually I enjoyed the cemetaries). Granny had no interest in following him around such places, but I was terribly fond of the old man and went with him everywhere, which is why when my cats follow me to the bathroom I say “I don’t need you to hold my hand while I pee”. But I digress. Grandpa had a Buick of some vintage that had the newfangled power door locks and windows. As we left for whatever destination we were heading for, we’d make a good production out of “Locking the framastavit valves” and “Engaging the Flamingo Drive”, replete with me wildly poking at the door lock buttons, ensuring that by the end of the summer the poor car was at the shop 'cause granny’s door wouldn’t open any more.
Wow, I haven’t thought about that in years…
When I was a child, we would go on family vacations to the Penn Dutch country. This meant a long drive in the car with 4 small kids crowded into the back seat. I don’t know whethe rmy mother invented the game or not, but we always played the license plate game.
The game had 2 parts. The first was writing down all 50 states and the 10 Canadian provinces. That was good for about a half hour at best. Then came the fun part. We would try to fill up the list from the cars passing by. This, remarkably, kept us pretty quiet except for arguments about whether truck plates counted and whether it was fair to run through parking lots to try to find the more difficult-to-find plates of western states, and whether a nonmoving plate counted.
The highlight of my trip to Expo 67 in Montreal was seeing both a Hawaii and a Northwest Territories plate. Yes, I am a geek.
As an adult I tried to get a car of friends to play the license plate game. They wouldn’t go for it. I pouted for several hours. Once, on a trip from Seattle to L.A.,
I convinced my wife to play. Her enthusiam quickly waned. I agreed to let it go but I still played the game in my head. I told you I’m a geek.
I still get excited when I see a plate I’ve never seen before. I just don’t tell anybody about it. They wouldn’t understand.
Along the lines of AFG’s spoonerizing mom, my own mother used to play a silly word game with us. She’d start out misusing a word:
“Don’t forget, before you put on your shoe, you have to put on your rock.”
“Mo-o-O-O-o-o-m, it’s a sock!”
“Sock? No, sock is what you call it when you don’t feel well.”
“No, that’s sick!”
“Sick? No, a sick is something you break off a tree.”
“That’s a stick!”
And so on. To this I attribute my unhealthy appreciation for puns.
She would also do driving tricks for us. Before anyone gets indignant about endangering children ;), it was always on our rural roads without any cars around. There were basically two tricks: “curvies,” i.e. slinging the car back and forth (under 15 mph), and “bumpies,” i.e. rapidly thumping her foot on the brake so the car would jerk erratically. We loved it, though I can see in retrospect it might not have been such a great idea.
And I certainly hope I’m not the only one to remember this thread.
My dad used to make up stories to amuse and entertain. He had loads of stories that I’m sure he made up as he went along. My favorite was always “The Turkey and the Tortoise”.
I was too old for this, but when the movie Apollo 13 came out, Dad and my younger sister used to play the Apollo 13 Game, where she sat in a computer chair and Dad rolled her around the house really fast. Then he’d let go and the chair would go flying across the room. She loooooooved this.
When ever we would take long road trips, my Dad used to let me sit in his lap and pretend like I was driving. And if he was feeling especialy chumly; he’d also let me take sips off of his beer.
My mom used to read me the Dr. Suess book “Are You My Mother?” but she did it with all these voices. I can still hear her making the baby bird squeaky voice.
This stands out among all the wonderful things she did to amuse me, but she did so many things. She was really a kid at heart and always treated me more like a friend than a daughter.
My dad used to build forts for us kids out of snow or hay bales. He was actually pretty good at it; they always had a couple rooms and little hiding nooks.
Our front yard was a hill but the top of the hill was large and fairly level. Dad would let the grass on the top grow past knee high and then he would mow a maze in the grass. Once we had the maze figured out, he would mow it and start over.
Whifton_Polekitty, I also got the Firesign Theatre treatment.