Then I said, "hi hungry, I'm dad!:

Other dads: pic.twitter.com/tXTobosv2Y

— Cats are the future (@iLikeCatShirts) November 6, 2016

There’s a stereotype with a big old chunk of truth in the middle: some men aren’t great at communicating their feelings. You know who else is bad at communicating? Hormonal kids approaching adolescence. This can lead to a lot of icy cold car journeys and awkward meal times.

The dad joke is a beautiful and innocent method dads have used for generations to get a response from uncommunicative teens. Even if that’s just a groan and a tiny smile out the car window, it can feel like the thawing of the arctic tundra to dad.

What is a Dad Joke?

Dad jokes are short gags that normally involve the often-considered enemy of good comedy: puns. They are not meta, clever, or edgy. They often veer into the so-bad-they’re-good territory, and could be considered guilty pleasures.

DAD: [grabs chest] Quick! Call me an ambulance.
ME: [hesitantly] You're… an ambulance.
DAD: I'm- I'm so proud of you, son [dies]

— mo (@chuuew) May 4, 2016

The other pure thing about dad jokes is that they are never offensive. Most teen girls would rather throw themselves out of a moving minivan than the topic of sex come up on a family drive. Your son is probably thinking about girls all day, but anytime you even consider mentioning the subject to him he disappears into his stinky room for the winter. The dad joke never veers into the tawdry or raunchy. It’s a safe distraction from the minefield of teenage awkwardness.

[kids party]
"This bouncy castle is twice the price of last year"
Dad no
"That's.."
Please no dad
"..Inflation for you"
*kids start crying*

— Jaz (@jazmasta) July 11, 2015

Dad jokes are rarely original. The same lines have been echoed through the years, from dad to dad, from 80’s station wagons to rainy baseball practice, from backyard barbecues to sock-scented bouncy castles.

Why Dad Jokes? WHY?

They are not going to change the world, but I can’t imagine a world without them. A dad joke will rarely even make a room full of people laugh, but the simple dad joke is an innocent way of making your changing child laugh at the world. Sure they may be laughing at you not with you, but that’s okay, sometimes that’s enough.

Wrestling highlighted for me the differences between being a daddy, dad, and father. “Daddy” is something a child cries out when it is hurt or scared. Dad is the guy you toss a baseball with. The first two are simple.

Playing the father is alien and unnatural. It’s the thing you do when you’re not quite sure what to do, so you try acting out what a sitcom father or self-help book father or maybe even your own father would do—moments when you’re lacking conviction.

The first time I felt like a father was two weeks after my son was born. We were attempting to get him to sleep in his crib, away from us, which required crying himself to sleep. I remember standing at his door. I stood rigid as he screamed his desperate little warble. Everything inside me—my DNA encoded with generation upon generation of daddies—begged me to tear the door from its hinges, rush to his crib, scoop him up, and tell him he was going to be all right. A synapse fired; a thought followed: He has to face it.

My son’s first wrestling match took place after just two practice nights. He got spun around, wrapped up, and pinned so fast he had no idea where he was.

Since then, he’s gone through ups and downs. He’s placed second at a pair of tournaments. He’s whimpered and cried through matches. He ran off the mat during one match because he had to go to the bathroom—maybe part wanting to give up and part stressing his stomach into knots. He cried to me in the hallway. He didn’t know wrestling was going to be like this. He wanted to quit. He wanted to go home. But he had to face it.

My wife and I talked that night. Seeing her son getting beaten up and in tears had forced tears of her own. She wanted him out.

My kid is a whiz in school. He’s not challenged there. The only opposition he faces outside of wrestling is trying to get out of going to bed. Wrestling challenges, frustrates, and even hurts him physically. But outside our home, outside the wrestling gym, parents are getting divorced, children are getting shot for going to school, kids are calling each other ugly. And one day when we’re not hurrying him to or from practice, he may stop and feel these things.

Part of my job is to protect him, and part of my job is to prepare him. Knowing which and when is the hardest part.

At one tournament, he lost his first match but not by much, and he wrestled hard the whole time. His second opponent was already crying before the match began. I told my son before the match, as I held his hands and shook his arms, that anything could happen, that he could beat this kid if he believed he could. And I told him, “Just this once, I want you to be mean.”

First, he got takedown points. Then he got escape points. He got reversal points and near fall points. He beat him. He felt good. The third and final match, he earned his first pin of the season, halfway through the second round to earn a second-place medal.

That night, I asked him how he’d done it, where he’d found that. He told me he gotten mean.

Sometimes parenting feels like a three-way cage match, pitting daddy, dad, and father against each other—different instincts and impulses. Then again, maybe we need all three.

The Husband disciplines her, sure, but not as much as I do. In fact, here’s a mantra we have her repeat: “Mommy makes the rules!” That’s right. Because as Daddy can tell you, I have more of them, and each one has clauses and sub-clauses, and qualifiers.

Daddy is wrapped around her finger. And though you’d think such a position would occasionally prove restful, it does not. Being the DFP is exhausting. The other night I saw him trailing after her in a defeated slouch, muttering under his breath, “Why is she doing this to me?”

And I smiled because I know it’s because she loves her Daddy.

Too bad her love hurts!

E.R. Catalano
Zoe vs. The Universe

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