My dad had a favorite joke. He used to tell it with some regularity. My mom always rolled her eyes, but he loved it and kind of liked that she was sick of hearing it. When I was a kid, I asked him to tell it and recorded him on an old Panasonic tape recorder. I wish like hell I still had that tape. I've got one old video where you can hear his voice. I swear, the man gargled with gravel.
Fast forward (no pun intended). My mom remarried in the early 2000s. During their marriage, her then-husband finished and self-published his autobiography for his family and loved ones. It was so interesting and helped me get to know him better. A few years later, my mom wrote and published her own, and it is priceless, not only for her story, but for part of my dad's as well. I've only read it once---I read it once to my older son a little each night at bedtime. I barely made it through the part about my dad's passing. I tried to get her to make an audiobook so I could have a recording of her voice. But the voicemails I saved will have to do as her health started to deteriorate around that time.
Anyway, I really came to appreciate that joke over the years. I'm of the mind that everyone should know two jokes, a dirty one, and a clean one. I don't know if he had a dirty one, thought he used to have a bunch of inappropriate diddies he'd sing from time to time. I've adopted his joke as my clean one. It goes
There's this fellow. He's on a business trip. He checks into the hotel. As he's checking in, he asks, where can a man get a drink around here. The maître d' tells him, "Oh, the hotel has a beautiful rooftop bar. Just take the elevator to the top floor. So the man goes to his room, unpacks, and heads up to the roof to see this bar. He gets off the elevator and this bar is really something; you can see the whole city. He goes up to the bar, pulls up next to the only other guy there, and orders a drink.
As he sips his drink, he looks around and asks the bartender, "Say, anybody ever have a few too many and stumble over the side.
The other guy at the bar pipes up, "It's really something, there's and air-vent system that can sense when someone falls over the side, and if that happens, it'll kick on and pop 'em right back on the roof."
"Get out of here," the businessman replies.
"No, really, I'll show you," the man says as he walks toward the edge of the rooftop. Then, he steps off the side, and a second later, like magic, he pops right back up onto the rooftop, and ambles back over to the bar.
"I've got to try this!" the businessman explains as he hurries over to the edge. He steps off the roof, and plummets to his death.
The bartender takes his drink and begins wiping off the bar with a towel. He looks at the man sitting at the bar, shaking his head, and says, "Superman, what do you do those kinds of things?"
And that, is my dad's "Superman Joke."