I STILL REMEMBER THE first time I told my then-six-year-old son, Lev, that a clam makes calls with its 'shell phone. The laugh of recognition when he first got the joke was a moment I won't ever forget. When I told it a second time in front of his friends Henry and Amir, I could see how proud he was that I had made his friends laugh. Excuse the bragging, but I was the cool dad.
By Lev's ninth birthday party, things had begun to change. After the seventh or eighth time I asked him "What do you call someone with no body and no nose?" he dismissively rolled his eyes. "I get it, Dad..."
"... Nobody knows!"
"Stop it, Dad!"
I immediately shifted gears into food puns, reminding him and his friends that melons have weddings because they 'cantaloupe, but I got nothing except head shakes and averted eyes. I'm pretty sure I heard him say "Sorry about my dad" to his friends as they all ran off to play on their phones together.
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