Love is being awkward

And also very bad dad jokes, even if you’re not a dad

As a newly minted Papi, I want to extend to everyone else the opportunity to contribute to the “bad dad joke” humor of the universe. You don’t need to be a dad. You don’t need to have children. You don’t need to be masculine. You don’t need to be male. And – perhaps most importantly – you don’t even need a sense of humor.

You just need the courage to say something that will make someone else roll their eyes.

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Let’s go way (way) back in time to a point in my history when I was just old enough to believe that I wasn’t “young” anymore. So…. eighteen maybe? Possibly nineteen? And, in search of my place in the world, I had volunteered to be a camp counselor where I once was a camper. These were week-long camps, all the kids sleeping overnight in old cabins (some of which sported some awesome graffiti courtesy of yours truly), songs around the campfire each night, swimming in the lake, and – most importantly for a lot of kids – enjoying the dance on Friday night.

I am not a dancer. Feel free to check my references. But as I stood along the wall and listened to the music blaring from the cheap speakers, I felt a wave of misery at the sight of so many young tweens sheepishly grouping into boys on one side, girls on another, queers in a back corner, misfits in the other.

Shyness is so painful at that age.

“What do we do?” another counselor asked me.

“Ugh,” I tipped my head back and groaned at the only answer I could think of. “It’s a good thing I have no cool points to lose.” And then I went out into the middle of the vacant floor and began to shake my groove thing.

This video footage doesn’t quite capture all my best moves, but it’s close.

It was so embarrassing that thirty kids rushed at me all at once to get me to stop. They begged, they pleaded, and all I said in between each boogie step was, “I won’t stop until you start dancing.” And they did. They danced, they showed me better moves, they laughed, and more came out from the walls to join in. It was tremendously awkward and ridiculous, and we had so much fun we could barely breathe for all the laughter.

Being a kid is so hard. You’re consumed with fitting in, trying desperately not to stick out and get humiliated, and cool is a tough thing to maintain. It changes all the time. I never even knew who made those rules, but there was no point in time where I understood or obeyed them, and not for lack of trying. It turns out being an adult comes with the same risk of not fitting in, but sometimes we can find a network or community that shares or appreciates our differences.

And that’s what we give back to the universe when we allow ourselves to be awkward.

This isn’t just my perspective, there’s real research to back it up. Several groups have published papers on the benefits of dad jokes (which are the ultimate form of awkward for the largest section of the population), and nearly all of them come to the same conclusion – Stupid jokes show kids that being awkward is okay, that doing your own thing is essential as a human, and that families of all types love each other despite how many times we roll our eyes at one another.

“I think it’s important to embarrass your kids. Or, to be more specific, I think it’s important to do things traditionally viewed as embarrassing until your kids are basically immune to the effects. After years and years of being exposed to eye-roll-inducing humour, with a complete disregard for what anybody else thinks, kids will have nothing greater left to fear. They’ll gradually build up a strong immunity to judgement and embarrassment, and actually feel empowered to be themselves” (Billingsley, 2019).

And the eye roll thing? Let’s spend a minute on that, shall we?

My wife is the best indicator of how bad my jokes are. She rolls her eyes, looks away, shakes her head, and warns others not to encourage me by laughing. But secretly she’s smiling as she turns the other way so that I won’t see her. And you know I’m searching for an even worse joke to make her break down and complain about how terrible my lines are. Does she regret marrying me? Hell yes. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, if I can’t make someone despise a series of thirty-five egg jokes in under ten minutes, then I’m just not aiming high enough, and that sounds like an egg-istential crisis.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because sometimes a guy just needs a good laugh to keep going. So if you have a good (bad) joke or an awkward memory, tell me about it!

Your trans friend (and Bad Joke Papi),

Robin