One of a father's most solemn duties, and one from which Dad never shirked, is to tell the same jokes again and again until the family is weary of them. Our job, of course, is to chuckle politely and appear amused. Strangers may laugh at what seems new to them, but after a couple of decades or so, the jokes begin to mold. However, you, the reader, grew up with a different father and are tired of a completely different routine, so in the off chance that you may find my father's material fresh and entertaining, I present here an overview.

If Dad walks into a room and someone says, "Oh, you're back," he responds, "I'm only half back. The other half is front."

If a boy mentions how old he is (say four), Dad says, "Really? When I was a little boy I was five." He also starts stories of his childhood with this line.

If someone asks how old a child is, Dad answers, "He's 20. He's just a midget."

If you remark at something clever he has done, he explains, "I'm not as dumb as I look."

When he introduces someone or reminisces about mutual friends, he says, "I'll never forget good old what's-his-name."

Dad once hurt his arm and lost some flexibility for several weeks. When people asked about it, he would raise his arm over his head and say, "I used to be able to lift my arm this high, but now (lowering his arm a bit) I can only raise it to here." His delivery was so dry and matter-of-fact that the typical response was, "Oh, that's too bad."

When Deidre was dating, Dad told her what kind of guys he expected her to go out with. "I'm not going to let any average crumb date you. (pause) He has to be an above-average crumb."

When he hears of someone close to his age who has passed on, he remarks, "People are dying who have never died before."

He speaks of his adequate financial status: "I have money I haven't even spent."

With regard to his abilities, he says "I'm not good, but I'm slow."

He never refers to Fall as the time he goes back to work. He loves teaching and calls it the start of his vacation or the start of his play time. He has to be careful how he phrases it if Mom is listening because he is around the house a lot more during the summer and he doesn't want to be misunderstood.

He calls food recipes "formulas." He never cooks spaghetti, he "builds" it. For example, he will say, "Look what a good dinner your Mom built." He never passes an opportunity to tell anyone who will listen how wonderful she is.

If you say, "I was thinking..." and allow a pause he may ask, "What with?"

Instead of saying, "So I thought..." he says, "So I said to myself, 'Self, ...'"

When the power goes out, he describes the experience, "We had to watch TV by flashlight."

Dad told one of my friends that out of all the kids in the family, I'm one of them. He uses this formula a lot.

Dad sometimes stands in front at the start of the class when no one is saying anything and asks, "Can I change the subject?" I've tried this gag several times and it never works for me.

Dad has several ways of answering the phone:

* "I was just going to call you -- but I didn't know what to call you."

* "Hello, is Fred there?" (He says this when you call him.)

* "You're looking good today."

* (If he calls you) "Is this the voice to whom I'm speaking?"

* If someone calls and asks, "Is this Lynn?" he responds "Just a minute, let me check my license." Dad called the house once and Rebecca Ward answered. Rebecca said he sounded like Bruce, so he checked his license and discovered that he was not Bruce.

If you ask if you woke him up, he answers, "That's OK. I had to get up to answer the phone anyway."

Sometimes Dad will call me, we'll talk for a while, and finally he'll ask, "So, why did you call?" This worked out beautifully once when I played an April Fools joke on Dad and Deidre by calling them both at the same time (using my Lucent phone) without letting them know I was on the line. They both answered, talked for a bit, and finally, Dad asked, "So what did you call for?" Deidre, of course, assumed he was joking and just played along.

He likes to attribute discoveries to the name of the discovery. For example, if the Bernoulli effect were mentioned in conversation (and at our house it would be perfectly natural for such a topic to come up), he would inform everyone, "The Bernoulli effect is named after a man named Effect." Amazingly, very few people catch this one. Other facts you may not know are that the Fahrenheit thermometer was named after a man named Thermometer, a Mr. Generator built the first Van De Graff generator, and the Richter scale was invented by a man named Scale.

He will often quote himself to lend authority to his views by stating, "A wise man once said, ..." His target audience for this gag is often those who know him, and he doesn't appear to care whether he is found out or not.

You can measure static electricity by watching two gold leaves repel. He tells his physics class that the foil is is so thin it only has one side.

He sometimes begins class with, "I need your input making a decision. All in favor?" A few people raise their hands. "Any opposed?" A few others might raise their hands. He then beings the lecture with no further explaination.

Sometimes as an extra credit question on a quiz he will ask, "Guess your age." He might use a slide that gives a hint: 1) Write down your age. 2) Add 2. 3) Subtract 2.

On Monday class he sometimes asks if there is any news? If there is no response, he adds, "Any engagements?" If there is still no response, he mutters, "Cowards." One week Dave Newman raised his hand and reported, "I'm engaged to your daughter." Dad motioned him to the front and, using one of his classic magic tricks, pulled Dave's shirt out from under his jacket by the collar.

Dad refers to his kids and their spouses with mathematical notation, using the the first letter of our first name, and a numbers as follows: Dad = L1 (the "1" is subscripted), Mom = M1, Michelle = M2, David = D1, Deidre = D2, Dave = D3, Bruce = B1, Larry = L2, Sherri = S1, Scott = S2, and Shanna = S3. We all use it now and it's pretty handy.

Dad's military background shows sometimes. He calls his kids "The Troops." I grew up doing "details," not chores.

If he tells a story where someone is walking or driving, he narrates the travel by singing, "Na na na na na na----," like one of the kids in the Bill Cosby story about go cart races.

If Dad is eating dinner and someone mentions how good it is, Dad may say, "This is a meal fit for a king." Then he will slap his leg as if summoning a dog and say, "Here King! Here King!"

If you ask Dad a yes or no question that lacks an unambiguous yes or no answer (or sometimes just for fun) he says "yes" and shakes his head "no."

If you ask Dad where you buy some obscure item, say a salt shaker, his answer is always the same, (for example) "the salt shaker store."

If he mentions his weight, he says, "I'm 170 pounds stooped over." Raise an eyebrow and he explains, "The scales are under the bathroom sink."

Dad rarely gets mad and never looses his temper. If something really bad happens, though, like when he had a painful case of trigeminal neuralgia, he might remark, "It ticketh me off."

If there are (for example) two things to remember, he'll hold up three fingers, and say, "You should remember two things..."

Suppose you enter his office and his back is to the door. He acknowledges your presence by saying, "I hear footprints."

Ask him the date and he looks at his watch and says, "It's the 40th. ... Wait. That's the time."

If you tell Dad something he doesn't want to hear or disagrees with (or sometimes for no reason), he lets you finish, then turns his head towards you as if he just noticed you're there and says, "Oh, were you talking to me?"

When I show Dad some new high-tech product or a new technological marvel, he asks, "Is that made by Fisher-Price?" (Sometimes he substitutes Mattel for Fisher-Price.)

Suppose you ask for directions to Layton. He'll ask, "Do you know where Spanish Fork is?" You answer that you do and he replies, "OK, well it's not anywhere close to that."

We never had a dishwasher because, according to Dad, "we have six dishwashers." I am the oldest of the six.

Dad will often give a location - say, if you are planning to meet somewhere - as "the corner of Telephone and Telephone." It was years before I realized that old telephone booths at street corners often have lettering at the top on all four sides that look rather like a sign that would show the names of the intersecting streets, except that all sides say "Telephone."

When I tell Dad I have a blind date, he says, "It's a good thing you know sign language."

If it's late and we have to get up early, Dad observes that we'll need to sleep fast.

Dad sometimes picks on Thornton, an insignificant town near Rexburg without so much as a traffic light. If you ask about so-and-so's mission call, Dad may say he got his call to the West Thornton mission.

Ask Dad how many kids he has and he'll answer, "We have six - one of each."

Speaking of putting the kids to bed, he says, "I would have rocked them to sleep, but I couldn't find a rock."

Dad likes to twist the meaning of signs. A store posted a huge sign reading "Giant Sale" and Dad observed that they are selling giants.

Dad's parents had a funny sense of humor. When guests had stayed late and Lester got tired, he would say, "Lera, let's go to bed so these people can go."

When I was in Jr. High, I knew I would not be taking his physics class, since he teaches sections for non-science majors, so I audited his class just for fun. I was amazed at the stuff that would go over students' heads. For example, he explained cooling by evaporation with an example, "OK, suppose I'm standing at the edge of a swimming pool and I'm dry. You may have noticed that from my lectures. Now I jump in and get out again. Now I'm all wet. Some of you have known that since the beginning of the semester. As the water evaporates, it carries heat away from my skin..." and he proceeded to explain the physics principle. I thought it was pretty funny, but the best part was that no one got it and Dad never even cracked a smile. The class dutifully listened and took notes and appeared completely unaware that anything had happened. About halfway through the semester, a few people started to catch on and would start to laugh, but quickly stopped when no one else reacted. One of Dad's favorite comedians was Pat Paulsen, an old guy who would sit at his desk and report hysterical twists on news items with a deadpan face. I can see why Dad would like him, because that's his style. He seems to enjoy making his droll comments just as much if people never catch on. I have to admit it was great fun, even for the oldest of jokes, to watch things going over people's heads.

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