David Bruce: The Funniest People in Neighborhoods — Fathers

Fathers

• Elite gymnast Kerri Strug was badly injured at a meet at which her father was present. Someone told her father, “Dr. Strug, don’t worry. She’ll be fine for the U.S. Championships.” Dr. Strug got mad and replied, “I don’t care about any gymnastics meet or anything but Kerri right now. I don’t care if she ever walks into a gym again. I want to know if she’s ever going to be able to walk. I want to know if she’s ever going to be able to have children and hold her children in her arms.” Fortunately, Ms. Strug did recover with no ill effects — and she won a team gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

• Bob Newhart was a family man as well as a comedian and a comic actor. While making The Bob Newhart Show,he owned a very large watch instead of one of the small digital watches that were then becoming popular. When Oliver Clark, who played Mr. Herd on the sitcom, asked why he had bought such a large watch, Mr. Newhart replied that around 3 or 4 p.m. he would take a look at his watch, very obviously and very significantly, to let the people around him know that he was ready to go home and see his children. For that particular purpose, he needed a big watch.

• After lesbian comedian Kate Clinton came out to her father (he was good about it — he told her that he wanted her to be happy, to be safe, and to get health insurance), she invited him to dinner with her and some of her lesbian friends. No topics for discussion were off limits, except for one. For her own comfort, she told her friends not to talk about sex. Near the end of the meal, one of her friends asked her father, “Well, Mr. Clinton, what do you think we as gay people can do to make more bridges to straight people?” Her father replied, “Keep talking.”

• Financial writer Andrew Tobias knows two very intelligent gay parents. One father is American; the other father is French. That means that their two daughters are growing up bilingual in English and French. In addition, their housekeeper is Spanish and the only TV the two daughters were allowed to watch when they were younger was Spanish-language Disney tapes. The result: the girls are trilingual. By the way, the two girls were shocked when they visited a young friend. They came home and shouted, “Daddy! Papa! Penelope’s TV speaks English!”

• Golfer Peter Jacobsen’s voice was used in the game Golden Tee Golf, which was very popular in bars. One day, Mr. Jacobsen’s two daughters, Kristen and Amy, were in a bar. Both were college students, both were underage, and both were using fake IDs to buy alcohol. Suddenly, they heard their father’s voice saying, “It’s great to be here.” “Oh, my God!” Amy said. “Kristen, Dad’s here!” Both daughters ducked under the bar table, hoping that their father had not seen them, then discovered that they were sitting next to a Golden Tee game.

• Christy Hauptman started skydiving as a teenager, but she had a rocky — and terrified — start. Her father took her up in an airplane, and she was supposed to jump out at 15,000 feet. Instead, she started cursing and screamed at her father, “There’s no way I’m stepping out of this plane! I’ll die if I do!” (Many expletives have been deleted from that quotation.) This was the first time she had ever cursed that much — especially in front of her father. However, she decided to jump, she enjoyed it, and she has jumped hundreds of times since then.

• When Makeda Zook was in the third grade, a class project was to make a Father’s Day card. However, young Makeda had two lesbian mothers — her father was a sperm donor. Knowing this, her teacher asked her for which male in her life she would like to make a Father’s Day card. The choice was difficult — she could make a Father’s Day card for either her late grandfather, or for her guinea pig, which was a male. In the end, the card was gifted to Chocolate the guinea pig.

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