The Straight Story Puns

He was playing fortnite

True story; it even happened last night. My 5-year-old son walks up behind me and out of the blue says, "hey."

I turn to him and say, "yeah, kiddo? What's up?"

He responds, "it's dead grass."

I'm really confused and trying to figure out what's wrong and what he wants from me. "What? There's dead grass? What's wrong with that?"

.

.

.

He says, totally straight-faced, "hay is dead grass," and runs off.

Last month, a guy in Cincinnati stole a salt truck and led police on a 30 minute chase. (true story) At one point he tried to dump the load of salt on a police car. I told my teenage daughter this and she looked at me with a straight face and said “I guess they’re going to arrest him for assaulting an officer.” 😁

Never been prouder of my daughter. 😎

True story, I work in the health industry, get to ask these questions from time to time:

Me: Good morning (of course no matter what time of day it is)! I have 4 questions for you, let’s see if you studied for the test...

Patient: (most of the time, chuckle)

Me: Have you had a fever in the last 48 hours?

Patient: No

Me: Have you had a persistent cough recently?

Patient: No

Me: Have you been tested for COVID-19 recently?

Patient (sometimes): Yes

Me: Do you know the results of the test?

Patient (about 85% of the time): Negative

Me: You don’t know the results of the test? (Straight face behind mask)

Patient: It was negative

Me: (smile and chuckle showing through mask)

Patient: Ohhhh! I get it! (Laughs 95% of the time)

Me: Dad jokes have to happen... 🙂

/insert question #4 here, unrelated to said joke... heh

Trevor loved tractors. And I mean, really loved tractors. Forget any obsessions or high-level interests you may have, chances are they pale in the face of Trevor’s love for tractors.

Every day Trevor would get up, in his tractor-themed bedroom in his tractor-themed house, with its tractor-themed wallpaper and tractor-themed carpets, and he would make his bed with its tractor-themed duvet and tractor-themed sheets. He would go downstairs in his tractor-themed pajamas into his tractor-themed kitchen, with its tractor-themed tiles and cupboards, and he would eat his breakfast while perusing the latest tractor-themed magazine or annual.

Trevors’s degree in Agricultural Engineering hung on his living room wall, along with a copy of his thesis, which centred around (you guessed it) tractors. The living room was decorated with all sorts of tractor-related trinkets, including die-cast models, paintings and drawings.

The hedges in Trevor’s front garden were trimmed in the shape of tractors. His lawn was vividly decorated with tractor-driving garden gnomes, and his garden furniture was constructed from various parts from vintage tractor designs.

Trevor just had one thing missing from his otherwise tractor-centric life; he had never actually owned, nor driven, a real tractor.

Not for his lack of trying, of course. Trevor had been to many tractor shows over the years, and visited many farms with friends of his, but none of the tractors he had seen had ever been quite right. Trevor was so knowledgeable about tractors that every single one he had come across had possessed some hidden trait that he wasn’t keen on. His first experience of driving a real tractor had to be perfect.

One day, Trevor was flicking through one of his favourite publications, Powertrain Quarterly, when there was a knock at the door. Trevor answered, and it was his friend and fellow tractor enthusiast, Jeff.

Trevor welcomed Jeff in, and over tea and crumpets served on tractor-themed crockery, they discussed the merits of aluminium drawbars and front-end loaders. Eventually Trevor pressed Jeff to explain the reason for his visit.

“Well” said Jeff, “As I’m sure you know the convention comes to town later”.

The convention. Trevor had been thinking of little else the past three weeks. The neighbouring town annually threw a convention for farmers, particularly farmyard machinery. There would be combine harvesters, lawnmowers, and of course, tractors.

“Yes of course” replied Trevor

While walking down the street a man found a hundred dollars on the ground. Ecstatic, he took the money and walked into a nearby store, thinking he would treat himself. Inside, he purchased a large chocolate cake and started walking home. Suddenly, a crazy old man popped out of an alley next to him and ran straight past him! As he went by, he dropped a mechanical eyeball straight into the middle of the cake. Dazed, the man stopped and stared at the eyeball when it suddenly started to belt out a tune!

Well, obviously the best part of this story was the finding of the 100 dollars - everything else is just eye sing on the cake.

I say Middle Eastern cuz I honestly forget if he's Iraqi or Iranian. We were getting to know each other, and I asked him to tell me a fable from his country of origin. It went like this:

Ali: In (the town he grew up in), there is a tower. A very very tall tower, many stories high, with only stairs. And legend says that if you climb all the way to the very top...

(pause)

Me: What happens?

Ali: completely straight face You will get very dizzy.

That was it. I thought it was hilarious.

EDIT: I somehow JUST saw the Mod Sticky post from last week, where a lot of users have expressed similar sentiments to these. I apologize to the mods if this is not appropriate and respect your decision if you want to delete it. I just wanted to see if people were thinking the same kind of thing. Still, read it if ya like.

It used to be that /r/dadjokes was a place to post actual stories of real dad humor. 'My dad pulled out this groaner at dinner.' 'Just became a dad...I think I get it now!' These are the things that warm my heart and tickle my corny bone. And I don't think I'm alone.

Now, we're arrogant enough to think we know the formula for dad humor, so we can post anything reminiscent of it, and it counts as a dad joke. It's as if we think we own dad humor now, and we can bend it and shape it at will.

Let me tell you, folks. WE DO NOT OWN DAD HUMOR.

Even the dads among us don't own it. I think the universe just channels it through them in brilliant, glorious, involuntary sneezes. Some are more deft than others, and are seen by the universe as more worthy outlets. But they do not own it.

We can get close to elusive heart of dad humor, we can approach it, we can dance around it...but we can never touch it. This is where I take issue with posts like this one, which currently has over 4000 upvotes and 2000 net karma. Is it reminiscent of dad-like punly-ness? Would a dad chortle heartily at reading it? Yes, almost certainly yes. But does that make it a dad joke? No...I would argue not.

Dad jokes are also not just about the jokes themselves. They're about the response--that he manages to be surprised at his own genius, even on the eightieth repetition. They're about the face-palms and straight stares of family members. What is a dad joke without context?

My proposed solution: ban link/image posts. I wish it wouldn't have to come to that, but I can't see another way to get back on track to the real goal here. I have hover zoom--I understand the desire for instant gratification. I've skipped over interesting looking videos because they required a click.

But that's not why I come here.

I understand that there are legitimate dad jokes transmitted via text, or perhaps requiring a bit of visual context. At this point, though, I think they are a necessary sacrifice for a righteous cause. They can always be transcribed into text, or included in a self-post. Maybe it seems a bit extreme, especially in the face

My Dad tells this story all the time. He goes into great detail about what we bought at the mall and what the pig looked like, just to make it more believable. It usually takes a good 20 minutes to tell the story, it's nearly impossible to keep a straight face.

Did I ever tell you about the time we hit a pig on the highway? We were driving home from the mall and all of a sudden, BAM, we hit a pig. We didn't know what to do. The car wasn't damaged and we couldn't see what happened to the pig, so we just drove home. That night, we get a phone call and it's the police. "Sir, were you driving on I85 this afternoon", the police officer says. "Yes, I was officer" "Did you know it's against the law to leave the scene after running over a farm animal? That will be a $500 fine", says the officer. "No sir I didn't know it was against the law. But I've got to ask, how did you know it was me that ran over the pig?" The police officer responds, "The pig squealed"

So my pops is in the hospital pretty often lately, but he seems to still have a sense of humor about it. While I was eating dinner with him, he told me a story of his triumph earlier.

A nurse walks into his room, and tells him she's going to take his vitals.

He looks her straight in the eye and says, "Sure, as long as you give them back when you're done with them."

I look over at him and sigh the longest sigh I have all day, haha.

Three bulls one large, one medium, and one small are out of grass in their pasture. The large bull looks over next to their pasture and sees another pasture with beautiful and lush grass, so he takes a few steps back and charges straight into the fence and breaks it! The large bull started eating.

The two smaller bulls come in too and start eating the new grass.

"Hey!" said the large bull, "I put in the effort to eat this grass, go find your own!"

So the medium bull finds another pasture right next to the ones they're in, then he charges at the fence and breaks it and starts eating in that pasture. So the small bull comes in and starts eating.

"Hey!" exclaimed the medium bull, who then continued on to give the same spiel that the large bull gave the two smaller bulls.

Then the small bull looks around, but doesn't see any new grass fields. However, he spots a fence that led to a road. So the small bull opens the gate and walks and walks and walks to find that pasture.

Wanna know the moral of the story? A little bull comes a long way.

I was explaining to my dad how I won a match in a pool tournament the night before...

I had to play against the best player in the house but he had hurt his back earlier that day so he couldn't even walk straight. He won the opening lag to earn the right to break. I jokingly asked him "are you sure you want to break with that back injury?" He broke anyways and didn't make anything. My teammate and I proceeded to run the whole table, including the eight ball, to win the game as underdogs. Afterward my teammate said to the pro, "Hey, didn't /u/DetroitLarry warn you not to break?" At which point my dad interrupts my story to say...

"Now that's just adding insult to injury!"