The Sydney Morning Herald defines a Dad Joke as “a poor or obvious pun. It does not pretend to be more than that.”
A Reader’s Digest collection of Dad Jokes includes gems like, “Our wedding was so moving … even the cake was in tiers” and “Why do melons have weddings? Because they cantaloupe.”
The essential ingredients of a Dad Joke, Andrew Beaujon writes in the Washingtonian, are “puns, wordplay, appalling punch lines.”
Well, sorta. The inclusion of one or more of those characteristics may be necessary but isn’t sufficient. And it speaks to a growing confusion about just what is a Dad Joke.
Dad Jokes are to humor what Dead White Males are to literature: dated, ubiquitous, unwelcome. But they are not merely bad or corny jokes. (“What’s the difference between a poorly dressed man on a tricycle and a well-dressed man on a bicycle? Attire.”) A true Dad Joke is not the groaner that we perform. Dad Jokes are the ones we say in actual conversations. Dad Jokes are the kind of tortured puns that stop said conversations in their tracks.
A recent Progressive Insurance ad gets this right: When someone asks the dads to make them a burger, they say, “Poof, you’re a burger.”
If you are telling awful jokes, you are a bad comedian and horrible guest. But if you casually insert a pun into a normal conversation in way intended to humiliate your child or deny whatever actual emotions they might be addressing, you’re a dad.
Jason Zinoman, the comedy critic for the New York Times, gets close to this transactional definition of the Dad Joke. “Dad jokes,” he writes, “are also the training wheels for cringe comedy. Part of their purpose is to embarrass and create discomfort, a benign troll. The goal often is to get not a laugh but a groan.”
I am both a victim and purveyor of genuine Dad Jokes. My late father was born in 1918, and although I don’t think I ever heard him say “23 skidoo,” let’s just say his sense of humor was formed sometime in the Roosevelt administration. Possibly Teddy’s. If I mentioned to my dad that I was getting a haircut, he’d say, “Why don’t you get them all cut?” If I came down dressed neatly for an occasion, he’d say, “You look sharp as a tack — and just as flat-headed!”
And if one of us kids said we were running away from home, my father would say, “Let me help you pack!” or “Write if you get work!” (And my mother would chime in from the kitchen with, “Is that a promise or a threat?” proving that moms can tell Dad Jokes.)
My dad, however, never “told” jokes. Instead, he used joke-like statements to subvert our childhood egos.
The classic Dad Joke is also inheritable, like religion or male-pattern hair loss. Your dad afflicted you; you afflict your kids.
Whenever my kids complained that something hurt — say, when they moved their arm or put weight on their foot — I’d reply, “Then don’t do that.” Hilarious.
But like all inheritances, you take the good with the bad. Luckily I got my mother’s sense of humor, which was dry and sarcastic. I got my dad’s ears, chin and, according to my wife, his general level of curmudgeonliness.
And I got his jokes, including one I actually love.
Dad grew up in his father’s clothing store, and knew how to use a sewing machine. He would alter all our pants, and whenever we stripped to our underwear to try on a new pair, he’d turn to the door and say, “Hello, Mary!”
That’s a good joke. Thanks, Dad.
Andrew Silow-Carroll, the editor-in-chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is the father of two great kids — and one he is frankly not crazy about. Now that’s a Dad Joke!
