Dad jokes

My friends at the Well were teasing me about my “Dad jokes.” I’m not exactly sure of the definition of dad jokes, but thinking of it got me to remembering my father. My father had several puns, rhymes an other jokes that he loved to tell. They were mostly silly sorts of things like these:

Old Mother Hubbard went to her cupboard to get her poor daughter a dress.
When she go there, the cupboard was bare, and so was her daughter, I guess.

Why don’t ducks fly upside down?
Because if they do they’ll quack up.

Did you know there were instructions for seduction in the Bible?
Solomon gave her wine and nectar. (necked her)

There is also marijuana in the Bible.
Paul says, “I myself was once stoned.”

He had quite a few others. When I was a teenager, I used to groan at his jokes. Partly it was that I had heard all of them before. Part of it was that I though my dad was a bit silly and maybe was a bit embarrassed when he told jokes to my friends. His jokes really weren’t the most difficult parts of his personality, just something I didn’t appreciate at the time.

Now, 39 years after he died, I like to remember him and his jokes make me smile. I tell them on occasion. And, after all I am a father and a grandfather, so I guess having a few dad jokes is pretty much expected. Furthermore our grandchildren are just the right ages to begin to understand the concept of jokes.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?

Grandpa, how do I look?
With your eyes.

Do you know the Christmas alphabet?
ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
No L

How can you tell if a pterodactyl is using your bathroom?
You can’t. The pee is silent.

My grandchildren laugh at my jokes. My children roll their eyes.

One of the types of humor that i have enjoyed for much of my life is a simple pun. I like it even better if the pun requires a significant bit of storytelling for a setup.

Did you know that two of William Penn’s aunts settled in the new world with him. They opened a bakery and sold their goods. Some people, however, thought that their prices were simply too high. They complained about the pie rates of Penn’s aunts.

Then there is the related one: A slice of apple pie is $2.50 in Jamaica and $3 in the Bahamas. These are the pie rates of the Caribbean.

When I was a student, I had a few friends who would try to make serial puns, each picking up where another left off. The jokes were pretty silly and we’d get to giggling. My wife would say to others, “Don’t encourage him!” and she got really good at not reacting at all to a pun. I’d look for some kind of giggle or even a groan, but she tried to give no reaction whatsoever.

Did you hear about the guy whose wife said he had no sense of direction/ It made him so mad that he packed up his things and right.

Did you know that the first French fries weren’t actually cooked in France? They were cooked in Greece.

Don’t ever buy a pair of shoes from a drug dealer. You don’t know what they’re laced with and you could be tripping all day long.

It’s easy to make holy water. You just boil the hell out of it.

I have a young adult friend who is younger than our children. He probably thinks of me as being of the generation of his grandparents. He likes puns and he will laugh at my silly jokes. Sometimes when we are sitting together in choir we can even be a bit disruptive laughing and giggling at our silliness.

Do you know why the orchestra tunes to the oboe? Because there is no such thing as an oboist who could admit to being out of tune.

Did you know the bassoon was invented by a duck hunter? He just crossed a shotgun with a duck call and a new instrument was born.

If a preschooler won’t lie down at nap time is he guilty of resisting a rest?

The secret service no longer yells “Get down!” if there is a threat to the president. Now they have to yell, “Donald, duck!”
.
I think my friends are right. I probably am guilty of making dad jokes.

It reminds me of the book I read about overcoming gravity.
It was impossible to put down.

I like words. I like thinking about things in language. I enjoy reading and writing and talking. I love to tell stories. I’m pretty susceptible to dad jokes.

Did you hear that FedEx and UPS are merging. They are going to be FedUps.

I was named after Thomas Jefferson.
But your name is Ted Huffman!
True, but Jefferson was named in 1743 and I was named tin 1953. I was definitely named after him.

Hey, pirate, I heard it is your birthday.
Aye Matey
Wow! You don’t look like you’re more than 40.

I used to tell the guys at the coffee shop that clergy needed to go to retreats in order to exchange pulpit jokes. They said that was a waste of time because they told jokes every morning at coffee. I reminded them that they hadn’t ever told a joke I could repeat from the pulpit.

Actually I don’t tell many pulpit jokes. One has to be careful not to hurt someone’s feelings. And if your job is to tell the truth, you need to be careful with your choice of words. People laugh when I preach because I tell stories about the things real people do and we do tend to be funny at times - and sometimes we laugh when we recognize ourselves.

You’d better take your passport to the bathroom because you’re an American when you go in and you’re an American when you come out, but while you are in there European.

Even I know I should quit telling jokes sometimes.

Copyright (c) 2020 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!

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