I said "I know, they came out of the closet this morning".
I call it my jingle bell rock.
Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.
But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."
It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.
You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.
In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.
This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un
... keep reading on reddit ➡Me: If humans lose the ability to hear high frequency volumes as they get older, can my 4 week old son hear a dog whistle?
Doctor: No, humans can never hear that high of a frequency no matter what age they are.
Me: Trick question... dogs can't whistle.
I asked him today "why don't you ever shut up?" He responded "I find it hard to bite my tongue"
When I her asked why, she said it was because their "Stupid Cauliflower Licorice Tastes A Lot Like Dog Shit."
We have to buy so much milk in our household because I'm such a serial dad joker. Amongst all my friends and family, even at my wedding, it was noted about my bad jokes. My wife of one week tolerates my humour, but doesn't ever attempt to play along with dad jokes or make any of her own. Point is - I'm not used to hearing her say one.
Today, sitting at a bar on our honeymoon I commented about how "these selfie sticks are becoming ridiculous. Everyone seems to have one now. It's stupid"... Only for her to reply with..."I know it's seriously getting out of hand".
I lost my shit and freaked out. She got scared cause she thought something bad happened...I'm like "did you seriously not just hear yourself. I'm not even mad that was amazing".
She just rolled her eyes.
In the freezer section, my 2 year old goes:
"What's that daddy?"
"Those are turkey drums. (drumsticks with a brand name) That's how they get into turkey rock bands"
"oh"
Like he just accepts this shit as fact and I can't stop myself :D
Fiancée thought it was a stupid joke so I can be sure it was awesome.
All of them.
Dad told this to me while passing a cemetery with the stupid shit eating grin he wears whenever he tells his god awful jokes.
I've heard my Pop tell this story so many times, I feel as though it's my duty to share it with this wonderful subreddit.
So, Pops is an air traffic controller. And a few years back, there was an initiative to boost workplace morale and get people to work together as a team.
Needless to say, the whole campaign was the butt of lots of jokes around the sector. Not that teamwork is a bad thing, of course. Just easy fodder for jokes, particularly in a group of middle-aged, dad-joke-loving men.
So one time, Pops is shooting the shit with another controller, and they're giving each other a hard time about one thing or another. And their supervisor walks up; real squirrelly guy who didn't cut it as an actually controller so they made him a supervisor (the FAA is silly that way). And he hears my Pops and the other guy razzing each other, and sticks his head in the sector and says, "Gentlemen, there's no 'I' in 'team'."
And Pops responds, "Yeah, but there's a 'U' in 'stupid'!"
Every time he tells that story, he just loses it. Cracks himself up. Even though I'm sure I've heard him tell it two dozen times.
I was listening to NPR, and the host was interviewing some astro science major, talking about Steven Hawking's black hole theory.
Then the host asks "what are gravity waves?" During the guests NPR require pause, I said aloud to myself "...this is some heavy shit."
