Dad Jokes

 A young man from the hinterlands became the first in his family to attend university. When the son returned home around Christmas time at the close of the fall semester, the father asked the son if he had gained any knowledge from his first term in an institution of higher learning.

"Uh," the son replied, "pi r squared."

The father reached across and smacked the son on the side of the head. "Ain't you learnt nothin'?" he demanded. "Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square."

I first heard that joke from my dad decades ago. Today, with the benefit of more than half a lifetime's experience as a dad/stepdad, I can tell dad jokes with the best of them. It is this spirit that I offer a sequel to the original.

The town was too small to rate a bus station. The Greyhound busses that stopped here did so on the side of the highway. Or at least they did on those rare occasions when someone actually wanted to get on the bus here—and on those even rarer occasions when someone wanted to get off. The nearest airport was two hundred miles away, which more or less defeated the purpose of flying home to get there quickly. Besides, Grant didn't mind the bus ride; he actually found it calming to watch the view go by outside his window.

His sister Cathy was there to meet him at the bus and give him a ride home. "Hey sis! Thanks for the ride."

"No problem. How was your second semester?"

"Really good. I think I finally hit my stride." He never told anyone—never would tell anyone—how close he came to packing it in and coming home during the fall semester. Now that freshman year was over, he was glad he stuck it out. "How are mom and dad?"

"Oh, you know. About the same."

Cathy's car pulled up in front of the family house, and Grant was greeted immediately by the two family dogs, Tin-tin and Pickles. "Hey guys! You miss me?"

Grant was met with the familiar scents of home as he walked through the door. A loaf of bread was baking in the oven, while German style pork chops sizzled on top of the stove. "Dinner's almost ready," his mother called out.

"Fantastic," Grant said. "I'm starving."

Over dinner, Grant's father asked from across the table, "Well, you first year of college is behind you. What knowledge do you have to share with the family this time?"

"Well, I, uh," Grant searched for something to say. How does one condense the most prolific thirty-two weeks of learning in one's lifetime into a tidbit of dinnertime conversation? "Uh, e to the i times pi is negative one."

Grant looked across the table at his father, waiting for the reaction. His father's gaze turned suddenly cold, and he spoke in a lowered voice. "So that's it? One year away at college and now you're smarter than all of us? You think you're better than your old man now? Is that it? You think that now that you got some highfalutin book learning that you can impress us with your big words and your worldly knowledge?"

"But you asked—"

"Shut up! Now son, you might think you're clever, but let me tell you this and let me tell you good. Everyone knows that the equation you gave is just a special case of the function e to the i times x being sinusoidal."