Dad Jokes

Oh dear, has it come to this? My own dad didn't really do jokes. He wasn't exactly humourless, for he loved the films of Norman Wisdom which had him laughing out loud, but he rarely told jokes. Maybe his sense of humour was more visual than verbal - not something I've considered before -but joke telling wasn't his forté. 

I can only recall one joke that he ever told (and I must have been about ten at the time). It went like this: A trio of West Indian brothers opened a fish & chip shop in south-east London. When they applied to the GPO for a telephone number they were assigned BLAckfriars 123. That made him fair hoot. 

For younger readers I should explain that prior to the mid-1960s introduction of automated Standard Trunk Dialling (with all digit phone numbers), callers would dial a manned telephone exchange using the numerical equivalent of the three-letter id of the exchange and then ask the operator to connect them with the local customer number. A ghostly remnant of the time when telephone dials carried letters equivalent to numbers can still be seen on smartphones today. BLA would have been represented by the digits 252 (should you care to check). By the way, the joke falls down on a technicality because the customer part of the number was always four digits, not three. WHItehall 1212 (the original number for Scotland Yard) is perhaps the most famous example.

What then is the essence of a Dad Joke? It's usually quite short. often in the form of a question and answer, and is frequently based around aa bad  pun or similar dubious play on words, the whole delivery being a tease designed to elicit groans from the hearer for it being 'corny', rather than any appreciation for its wit. 

One thing that did surprise me was to learn that the label Dad Joke is relatively recent (1987 - happy 40th birthday), though the style clearly goes way back to a time when hippos ruled the world.

a hippo dad

At which point, let me regale you with twenty of the  worst 'hippo' dad jokes (though some are not half bad):

01. What do you call a hippo with one leg? - A hoppo.

02. What do you call  hippo with no hips? A potamus.

03. What do you call a lame hippo? A limpo.

04. What do you call a lame hippo who inhabits the Limpopo river? A limpopotamus or limpopopopotamus
05. What do you call a hippo with no legs? It doesn't matter, as he can't come when you call him.

06. What do you call a hippo with a cold? A hipposnotamus.

07. What do you call a hippo that can rap? A hiphopotomus.

08. What role do you give to a hippo that can act? Hippolyta (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).

09. What do you call a hippo with Tourettes? A hippopottymouth.

10. What do you call a hippo who never follows his own advice? A hippocrite.

11. What do you call a non-existent hippo? Hippothetical.

12. What do you call a hippo with no legs swimming in a river? Bob (or clever Dick)...think about it.

13. Why is a hippo wearing speedos like an elephant? They both have large trunks.

14. Hippos can run and swim faster than human beings. Your best chance in the triathlon is the bicycle race.

15. What do you get if you cross a hippo with Snoop Dogg? A smokealotapotamus. 
16. What's the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One's heavy, the other's a little lighter.

17. Where do hippos go for a grand night out? To a hippodrome. 

18. Where do brainy hippos go to university? The hippocampus. 

19. Why do hippos hate the cold? Because of hippothermia.

20. Why don't you ever see hippos hiding in trees? Because they're really good at it.

Or course I've written a bit of a fun poem for today's blog. When reading it, you'll need to put the stress on the fourth syllable of hippopotamus, making it either a short ä (first verse) or a long ā (pronounced like an r, last verse), hence the diacritic marks. Don't worry, the rhymes in the poem will keep you on track.

Hippopotämus <> Hippopotāmus

Hippopotämus

Don't try to frame us

Defame or fat shame us

Certainly don't blame us

Sad ignoramus

It's Greek of course, for river horse

And we're much better sports

Than any phoney water polo pony

<>

OK, we understand that reprimand

Dismiss what we've been taught

Take this chance to change our stance

He don't alarm us

Delights to charm us

Won't never harm us

No one's as calm as

Hippopotāmus

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Dad Jokes

I went on a day trip to Dumfries last week and hurt my ankle. I went to the hospital and asked for help. I was told “Wee sleket cowerin’ timrous beastie/O, what a panic is in thy breastie.” I’d gone to the Burns Unit.

That was a joke (though I was in Dumfries last week) but is it a dad joke? What is a dad joke? I’m not a dad but the idea is that the above should have induced a groan and/or rolling of the eyes. Why should dads have all the fun?

Come to that why shouldn’t mums have fun as well. Just checked the wonderful mumsnet site and there is this:

Why did the pirate walk the plank? - Because he didn't have a dog.

At which point I began to wonder if there wasn’t a bit more to this than first meets the eye. I went on various sites and the following is a sort of summary of them:

‘I wonder also if it's got anything to do with the typical views of parenting, where dad is the "fun parent" since mum is the one doing the everyday work of childcare and is therefore seen as boring, stuffy, unfun, etc.’

‘In addition...I think this is just a symptom of the "women can't be funny" stereotype.’

‘Quite a strong societal stereotype about moms versus dads. It's not so much a stereotype that dads are funnier, but that they're fun and more of an additional kid then another parent and that somehow is okay.’

‘This is what I think! Once I was cooking for my two roommates and two mutual friends while three of them were playing a game and not helping me at all. The fourth just walked in, stood next to me and I complained, "Well I guess I know why they call me the mum now." He said "Oh yeah totally and I'm the dad."

As the fool I am, I thought that meant I had an ally. Asked if he thought he could get them to help or if maybe I should set a boundary and refuse to cook. He laughed and said "No, I'm the dad, the fun parent!" and went to go play games with them.’.

I thought the British Psychological Society might help and here is Marc Hye-Knudsen in 2023:

‘What, moreover, are we to make of the association of dad jokes with dads? Are fathers indeed more prone to telling dad jokes, and if so, why? It might seem tempting to simply dismiss dad jokes as bad jokes, at the same time accusing dads of just having a bad sense of humour, but that would be a mistake.

When considered properly, dad jokes are an intricately multi-layered and fascinating phenomenon that reveals a lot not just about how humour and joke-telling work but also about fathers' psychology and their relationships with their children.’

And that’s as far as I’m going as it gets a bit technical after that.

I’ve read a lot of jokes while doing this and I thought I’d got immune to the ‘simple joke that is not particularly funny or original, often using puns considered typical of jokes made by older men, sometimes intentionally to annoy their children’ (Cambridge Dictionary) but this still got a chuckle. Think of it as the poem for the week:

A Duck walks into a Bar

“Got any bread?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”
“No, and if you ask me again, I’ll nail your beak to the bar”
“Got any nails?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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