A: Dad, can you put my shoes on?
B: No, I don’t think they’ll fit me.
A: Haha, that’s such a dad joke.
B: I know! Here’s another: why did the scarecrow win an award?
A: Huh, what? I don’t know!
B: Because he was outstanding in his field.
A: Oh god, please, stop!
B: You love it, really. What do you call a fish with no eye?
A: I don’t want to know.
B: A fsh. Last one: what’s brown and sticky?
A: Ugh, a stick. No, really, enough. Your jokes are so bad.
B: You mean they’re so bad, they’re good.
A: I mean, there’s a big difference between bad jokes and dad jokes: the first letter.
NOW LET’S REVIEW THE VOCABULARY!
The child is asking the father for help putting on the shoes. However, the question can also refer to the father putting on the shoes himself, which would not make much sense. He is pretending the child means the latter, in which case, the shoes would be too small.
Dad jokes are unfunny or unoriginal jokes told by middle-aged men, which make you groan rather than laugh.
The father is deliberately misinterpreting outstanding as ‘out standing’: ‘out’ meaning ‘outside’, so ‘standing outside’. ‘Field’ can mean an area of expertise or, literally, a field on a farm. You win an award if you achieve something extraordinary, or ‘outstanding’, in your area of expertise, or ‘field’. A scarecrow always stands outside in a field.
Again, a misinterpretation, this time, the letter ‘i’ instead of an eye. Fish without the letter ‘i’ spells ‘fsh’.
This joke is a play on the adjective sticky, which usually means ‘adhesive’. However, you can turn most nouns into adjectives by adding a ‘y’. ‘Sticky’ can also mean ‘stick-like’.
This expression refers to something being so bad, it becomes laughable. Dad jokes can make you laugh exactly because they are so bad.
The child, being cheeky, means that ‘bad’ and ‘dad’ are nearly spelled the same, so the difference is not big at all – and not only in the literal sense!
