Joke Bomb
My post last night reminded me of another of the more rewarding parts of being a parent - fucking with young, impressonable minds.
Anyone who has spoken to me for longer than 30 seconds knows that I love to drop little humorous asides into everyday conversation - in a way I'm sort of a retarded homeless man's Dennis Miller. I can't just turn off that part of me when I'm talking to my kids. So from time to time, I'll be standing over my two daughters making a Dad Speech, and something I'll say will meet their blank, uncomprehending faces, ricochet off their foreheads, and finally land at the feet of my laugh-stifling, eye-rolling wife.
For example... a couple of weeks ago the two girls were sharing a bath, shouting and splashing and making a generally soggy mess of the bathroom. Hearing the commotion building from the kitchen, I called out to them gruffly, "Girls, what is the first ruleof bath time?" They replied almost in unison, "No splashing, Daddy." At which point I found myself shouting back to them, "No, the first rule of bath time is you
don't talk about bath time. The
second rule of bath time is no splashing." That one they met with the grade school equivalent of stunned silence, while I, having thoroughly amused myself, smugly went back to the dishes.
I hope that one night twenty years from now Iget a phone call, and it's one of my kids saying, "Hey Pop. We just watched this movie called 'Fight Club'... is that where you got that shit about the rules of bathtime?" My fear is that karma exists, and the first time I learn they got the joke is when one of them scolds me with "Dad, you know the first rule of adult diapers..."
