The day I realized I'd been telling dad jokes backwards for 20 years

I was at my son's baseball game last Saturday and another dad told one. "Why don't scientists trust atoms?" I knew the punchline was "they make up everything" but I blurted it out before the setup was finished. Three dads just stared at me. My own kid said "Dad, you're supposed to let them guess first." Turns out the whole point of a dad joke is the pause and the groan. I'd been just blurting the punchline immediately like a robot. Has anyone else accidentally been doing this format wrong their whole life?

2 comments

2 Comments

grant_perry1mo ago

And the thing is, you probably made your own kids groan harder by accident all those years. Like, my dad used to just fire off punchlines the second he walked in the room. "I'm reading a book about mummies." Blank stares. "It's pretty gripping stuff." That was his joke setup and punchline wrapped into one, no pause at all. I think we get so focused on having the clever answer ready that we forget the joke is really about the anticipation and the shared eye-roll. Maybe the real dad joke format is just making everyone sigh loudly enough to scare the dog.

the_val1mo ago

Flip it around and think about it from the kids' perspective for a second... you were actually training them to always be ready for the punchline before the setup even finishes, which is kind of a life skill in its own way. Not a joke skill, but a survival skill for dealing with fast talkers and people who skip to the end of stories. So maybe on accident you turned your kids into elite listeners who can spot a bad take from a mile away.