OCR Text |
Show Some of the things I learned at Dad School the editor's column Even my 8-year-old thinks he is now Jay Leno, compliments of this single, lame joke. He's told it to me a dozen times. I should have learned with my oldest child the failed experiment of my homework assignments during dur-ing my first term in Dad School. Her friends often tellher she has her father's sense of humor. It is not a compliment. Shannan has on over-developed funny bone, with an appreciation for puns (if there can be such a thing) that is downright unhealthy for one so young. She doesn't laugh at my attempts at humor (that would worry me), but she usually understands them, and that is a major cause of concern. And worst of all, she'll turn on me in a second and use this awful sense of humor to get back at me for all that experimentation - just like they told us in the Parenting Philosophy Phi-losophy 110, warp them when they are young, and they will make you pay for the rest of your life. And that's what scares me about the cemetery joke. After my earlier experience with Shannan, I had been careful not to similarly damage dam-age my other kids with tainted humor. Now it may be too late. It just goes to show you, in parenting par-enting as in life, a little learning can be a dangerous thing. Maybe I'd better sign up for more Dad School classes this summer. You know, the old saw about insanity being hereditary is true -but it works both ways. Sometimes parents can drive kid.s crazy before it comes back to ; you. And maybe there are worse thing to inherit. Like a bad sense of '. humor, for example. '. A couple of weeks ago I took ; some of my children on a museum tour- one of those trips where you overdo something by trying to do i everything. ! We started at the Springville ; Art Museum. An odd place for 4-' 4-' and 6-year-old children? Not re- ally. We chose the art museum ! because we had never been there, because I have parental expecta-; expecta-; tions about the artistic ability of my kids, because it was free. ' It was a good choice on all '. counts. ; We looked ateach painting, each ' sculpture, and talked about what the artist was trying to say with his or her work and then we went to lunch - a picnic in Hobble Creek Canyon. From there, we headed towards the Bean Museum at BYU, and as we neared the Provo City Cemetery I told the kids, against my better judgment and common sense, "You .know, people are just dying to get into that place." Fathers thrive on old, corny jokes. We take particular delight in real groaners the kind of jokes pline courses and dropped out of nagging after just two terms. But I did very well in my music classes, especially early rock and roll; and I excelled in the humor, especially in the211 class andPun-ishment411. So with this extensive educational educa-tional background, it was only natural that I should thoughtlessly throw out such a bad joke as the old line about people dying to get into the cemetery. I forgot there was a 6-year-old in the car. (Maybe I need to take some summer refresher courses.) "Daddy," Meghan asked with all the innocence of her youth. "Why are people dying to get into the cemetery?" Adrienne, who is 10 and a little quicker than her younger sister, replied with all the understanding of an older sister: "Oh, Meghan. You're so stupid." "It's a joke, Honey," I explained, using the techniques picked up in my class on Healing Hurt Young Egos 355. Then I patiently explained ex-plained why some people, admittedly admit-tedly not many, but some, might find the story mildly amusing. Once she understood it, Meghan thought the joke was a hoot. In fact, 111 bet she's told it a hundred times since I mentioned it to her fifty : times just to me: "You know something, Daddy?" "What, Sweety?" "People are just dying to get into the cemetery." By MARC HADDOCK that make the kids wince. In fact, I've often told my kids that "Crummy Jokes 211"wasoneof my favorite classes at Dad School, that place where all fathers learn the parenting skills so necessary in today's society. (Other popular classes which may or may not be the topic of future columns include Nagging 101,102, 201,321 and 45 1R, as well as graduate naggingcourses, Discipline Disci-pline that Doesn't, and Music Your Kids will Hate. Parenting doesn't come easy, and if it wasn't for Dad School, I don't know what we fathers fa-thers would do.) Of course, I flunked the disci- |