You Might Be A Dad If...

Josh is a pretty old soul. A lot of his family are old souls, actually. And what I mean by that is that they're pretty mentally mature and think pretty logically, and also they tend to enjoy things that younger-minded people of their same age do not enjoy. For example, Josh was watching Peter Pan with the kids and later on our family walk, he commented on the fact that the Darling children's father wasn't a bad guy and hadn't really done anything wrong. He said that it made sense for him to have Wendy sleep in a room by herself rather than share the nursery with her younger brothers, that dogs should sleep outside, that drawing on his last clean shirt was a pretty offensive thing. His anger was justified and it's not like he screamed at his kids or did anything particularly offensive.

I pointed out that he kicked Nana out of the house even though it was obvious that she was accustomed to staying inside with the children, that he couldn't appreciate how much his children loved to be together, that he was shouting at the family as a whole and seemed to be more preoccupied with his pending evening out than with his children. But in reality, I think Josh was right. That father had acted like any father would have under the circumstances and although as a child, I thought Mr. Darling was cranky and mean, as an adult I now recognize that he's just a dad. Thanks to Josh for pointing that out.

Anyway, it's that fatherly perspective that has shaped Josh's mid-to-late 20s. And what goes with fatherhood better than the cheesy, punny Dad Joke? I shall give you an example of what Josh has been up to just in the last week:

At the grocery store, he was being checked out by a female checker and a male, teenage bagger. The overhead music was playing "This is How You Remind Me" by Nickelback. The bagger said to the checker, "How about this song? Can you guess this song?" to which she replied, "I'm bad at this. I won't know it."

The bagger said she could just name the band even if she couldn't name the song title. Josh recognized the song so when the checker told Josh that his total was $29.34, Josh devised a quick plan on the spot.

"What if I were to give you $29.39?" he asked the checker.

She absently stared at him before correcting. "No, it's $29.34."

"Yes," Josh agreed, inserting his credit card into the chip reader. "But what if I gave you $29.39? What would you have to give me BACK?"

"Oh, did you somehow overpay?" the checker asked.

The bagger was no help at all. He also had no idea what Josh was trying to say. So Josh explained, "I'd have to get a nickel back then, wouldn't I?"

The bagger finally catches on. "Ohhh, he's trying to give you a hint! The band's name is Nickelback!"

Neither the bagger nor the checker was particularly impressed with Josh's dad joke.

Josh relayed this story to me in the car, where I had left him earlier to wrangle the kids into car seats while he paid for our groceries. As the story progressed, I cringed more and more often with embarrassment and Josh grew cheerier. He laughed heartily at the end of his retelling, perfectly pleased with himself while I resigned myself to fifty or sixty more years bound to this man.