It's time for my sabbatical to end. I didn't plan on taking such an extended leave of absence from the blog, but after the craziness and chaos of the year I found that once I shut off my brain it was hard to turn it back on. Thus began the longest break I've taken since this thing began. To be honest, it felt good to check out for a while. I've made no secret of the extensive amount of traveling I did in 2011, which all in all amounted to 2½ months combined. It was important to me that I spend the holidays re-connecting with my family. And while my time off was filled with laughter, bonding and a metric ton of presents, the unimaginable happened.
WonderWife™ always says that marriage is a repeat. After 11 years together, she's heard my schtick many times over. Even my A material causes groans and eye rolls from her. (Though let's be honest, my A material is really at best a B.) So am forced to endure her scorn, criticism or just plain apathy at my attempts at humor. But that was okay because there was my son, my clone, who had an appreciation for his corny dad.
Perhaps it was all of the time he spent with me during my time off or maybe it was the highs and lows of the dual adrenaline rushes of Hanukkah and his birthday that led him to this moment, but somewhere during the end of the year the Bean grew weary of my humor.
During a phone conversation I made some joke. It doesn’t really matter what it was, just know that it was of the cheesy variety and squarely aimed at his 6 year old sensibility. But upon hearing it the Bean paused and said, “That’s not funny, Dad.”
And that was it. My son now joins my wife, my friends and my co-workers in the list of people who endure, but don’t enjoy, my bad jokes.
Sigh.
At least there’s still the girl.
7 comments:
I feel your pain DGB. Once in a while I'm reduced to telling jokes to the cats. And they're not really the best audience.
Welcome back to the blog!
Cats already start with that look of disinterest. Tough room.
You've always got a kindred spirit in bad jokes over here. I sometimes think people who don't tolerate bad jokes are on a high horse. Sure, some of it is fairly elementary wordplay that other people might think but not say. But what's wrong with saying it? You never know what material will work until you try it out. At least you're trying to be funny -- there are morose people out there who wouldn't know a joke if it bit them in the rear.
When my kids do that, I try to remember that they also think the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies are the height of sophisticated humor.
Vance...Tell that to our friends.
Zen...Touche.
I will. Give me names! (I thought I was the one who received most of the eyeball rolls from our group.)
Vance...You're not paying enough attention. I get eye rolls a-plenty.
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