Bloody fathers, eh?
I suspect that at least 50% of the population have a father like mine; one who delights in continued and ritual humiliation of his progeny. And, what is more, revels in telling the same stories about it time and time again.

I've had a sort of condescending intellectual superiority (possibly the sole reason for becoming a teacher) since about the age of five, so he is particularly proud of times that he managed to get one over on me and trots out the tales with monotonous regularity. Suffice to say that every ex-girlfriend of mine has been treated to these recollections, as well as my wife and EVERY SINGLE BLOODY GUEST AT OUR WEDDING. My step-mother must have heard them at least twenty times. The worst thing is, because I'm so unpleasantly high-minded, it still pains me even in my late twenties.

So, for starters, there is the tale of the lightbulb. At the tender age of eight(ish), my bedroom light went 'ping', and father decided it was time I attempt some rudimentary DIY. The lightbulb-changing lesson progressed smoothly until 'getting the replacement bulb out of the box', which is when my visual acuity kicked in:

"Dad! The old lightbulb is cloudy, but this new one is clear."

The old lightbulb was a pearl lightbulb, of course. Would it have been too simple to tell me that? WOULD IT?! No. My father knew of my predilection for science, even at that tender age.

"Ah. The old one must have blown because of gas leaking through the glass. That's what has made it go cloudy. If you hold it upside-down for a while, it will go clear."

Half an hour I sat there. Half an hour of my life wasted trying to make a pearl lightbulb go clear. Happy, Dad?



The story from about the same time that gets trotted out even more frequently, thanks largely to a decent punchline, is 'making fried bread'. The fact that I have pretensions to being quite a good cook twenty years later makes this a family favourite...

I had just returned from my first ever Cub Scout camp. Rather than recall some mild homesickness and a veiled threat about having to clean out the Leaders' toilets, I regaled my parents with jolly tales of campfire songs and wide games. Best of all was the fried bread.

God bless my mother, in the dark days of the 1980s, she had a good grasp of healthy eating and five-a-day vegetables, and us kids ate pretty healthily (twenty years later, much to her distaste, I live on beer and vindaloos and have the anatomical proportions of a Weeble). So Cub Camp was my first encounter with the crispy, oozing glory that is fried bread. It was dished out to me one breakfast time, and I devoured very little else all weekend. On reflection, I wish I'd actually watched it being cooked...

A week or so later, Dad asks what I'd like for lunch, and holding tight to my memories of Camp, I ask can we have fried bread. Dad acquiesces, on the grounds that I come and help him cook it. I was unsure at first, being the sort of wimpy child that flinches from hot things: a fact which father soon latches on to.

"I'll get the frying pan out...and you look it up in the recipe book".

Books have always been my friends, and at tender pre-teen years, I would not have attempted any cookery manoeuvres without recourse to some sort of manual. So down comes Mum's trusty Delia Smith, and my youthful brows knit themselves in concentration. About five minutes later, my mother, my grandmother at least one set of neighbours, and a man who just happened to be walking past with his dog, are (unbenknownst to me) standing in or about the kitchen watching this poor kid trying to find the recipe for fried bread; my father taking centre stage, still anticipatorily clutching the frying pan like Kirk Douglas in Spartacus.

If I had not been so intense in my beloved reading, I'm sure I would have heard the muttered conversations:

"What's young ousgg doing?"
"He's looking up fried bread in the cookbook"
"Why?"
"He wanted to cook it, so I told him to"
"Oh...this should be good"

Clearly having an acute sense of how to be as ridiculous as possible, it was then that I blurt forth the line which now gets trotted out at a moment's notice at any family event or reunion. Without lifting my head from the book, still riffling through the index, and unaware of the onlooking spectators, the words fall forth from my lips:

"Dad? Does it come under 'bread' or 'fried'?"

Cue masses of delirium, cheers, slaps on the back and a general party atmosphere. In fairness to him, Dad did go on to make the mysterious recipe that was fried bread, but he burned it, the git.



Over the years, I have thankfully become wise to the wind-ups, and I thank the great Spaghetti Monster that I am not my younger brother, who was always that crucial bit slower on the uptake. He once spent a whole year trying not to fart (and feeling panicked when he did) in the genuine belief that 'too many trumps will make your willy fall off'. Bless.


EDIT: One of the replies in the thread has reminded me of my favourite ever wind-up, sadly not committed by my father, but by a friend of his. But it was a fatherly jape, so I feel justified in including it here:

Said gentleman got a new car as one of the perks of his job every few years. He was delighted to find, on one particular new motor, steering-wheel stereo controls: this being in the day when such an item was virtually unheard of.

Of course, he then proceeded to take his daughter for a drive, convinced her that the stereo was voice-controlled (while, of course, subtly manipulating the volume via his steering wheel control), and then having her spend fifty miles shouting 'LOUDER! LOUDER! QUIETER!' at the stereo while telling her that 'the stereo didn't recognise her voice yet'.

Truly inspired.
( ousgg is not seeking approval, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:08, 3 replies)

Hurray for comedy parents!
...my kids are only just beginning to doubt my assertion that our shower responds to voice commands.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:34, closed)

Your
Dad sounds ace!

*Click*
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 10:34, closed)

You had my sympathy
and I wasn't going to vote for you to teach your dad a lesson but then you typed in: "Dad? Does it come under 'bread' or 'fried'?" and I laughed too much so you get a vote.

The voice control addendum to your post reminded me of a friend who claimed to have all our names on voice dial on his mobile and would hold it up to his mouth and say "Cuntface!" or something similar and my phone would ring to much merriment.

Then we realised he was just holding down our speed-dial numbers as he spoke into the phone.
(vicarius, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 23:21, closed)