(we were arguing on Twitter is how this started because I think someone in the family has my charger, because the charger I’m using now I just noticed is super old and the cord is partly ripped but I’ve never ripped the cord on my charger and my laptop is less than a year old so this is DEFINITELY Laura or Johnny’s or Mom’s or even Zack’s and they must have taken mine by accident and I’m not mad but I’m definitely not going to hang onto this old charger that isn’t mine, so)
Please do not follow my dad on Twitter, as it would only encourage him. You can visit his home page and RT it, if you have to, but don’t reward this kind of behavior.
My dad’s Twitter feed is 90% him tweeting “Happy birthday!” at people without @-ing them. So it’s just a feed of “happy birthday let’s do lunch” to no one in particular.
Also, sometimes he tweets about airports.
God, I can’t wait to be this bad at technology.
I would encourage you to try to fax something.
It sounds so easy, and yet.
Oh god. I worked at fabricland, and EVERYTHING happens by fax (like, there is not a computer in the store). I have two degrees! I am a pretty dang smart person! Every fucking time I messed up faxing somehow.
Even if I can manage to fax something correctly, and there is no guarantee of THAT, people’s ability to RECEIVE faxes correctly is not….. robust.
Fax machines are evil. EVIL. And I’m not just saying that because I have only like managed to use them correctly first try maybe once.
I had to fax something last year and I was completely baffled. A coworker who’s twice my age took pity and helped me.
“Do you have a cover page for the document?”
“What…. what’s a cover page?”
My father taught me how to get into DOS Reader Rabbit when I was 3, and then promptly put me in charge of almost all of the technology after that point as early as possible (including teaching my mother to use the VCR. At 3.) So when, as a young teen, I found an old manual typewriter in the basement, brought it upstairs, cleaned off the mold, and brought it to the family room.
….. and then looked at them expectantly, because I had no idea what to do with the blank sheet of paper.
They were laughing too hard to explain it to me for a while.
Oh my gawd, so embarrassingly true. I have MULTIPLE TIMES printed two copies of things I had to take somewhere and fax, when I wanted to keep my own copy, on the unconscious assumption that the copy I faxed was going to just… um… disappear into the fax machine, you know, going to that other place.
One time, and I am not making any of this up. One time, at teh start of my sojourn in OfficeWorkLand I was working on reception. An older coworker came down and asked me, while I was on the phone, where the fax machine was. I was mid conversation so I just pointed in the general direction. When I got off the phone and turned to see if he’d worked out how to use our admittedly especially nefarious machine, I discovered… he was trying to use the binding machine as a fax. He’d inserted the paper where you put it to punch the holes, and asked me ‘do I just pull the lever, or…’. Idk how he thought it would know where to go.
He also couldn’t distinguish between the VERY DIFFERENT ‘internal call’ and ‘external call’ rings our phones did. His wife would come to pick him up and sometimes call him herself, sometimes ask me to call him. This resulted in him answering the phone ‘is that you, toots?’ multiple times. He was always more embarrassed about it than me, thought (toots! Who even says that!)
Also, I can’t use my partner’s phone. It’s a regular android, but he has all the text prediction settings etc turned to Old Person (he’s very tech savvy as long as he doesn’t have to use it to communicate, at which point he’s basically 70) and it defeats me every time.
I got bested trying to text to an unfamiliar number on an unfamiliar phone, and suddenly I had a preview of old age. ngl, I cried a little bit.
Also, we all made fun of my mother for soooooo long because she couldn’t figure out how to retrieve messages on her stupid phone. Then I tried and so did my sister, and now we’re not laughing at her; some phone kiosk sadist offloaded the least intuitive phone ever on her.
Somebody said “ngl” to me the other day, and I thought it was a typo.
NOW I REALIZE WHAT IT MEANS.
and the toast is a place of joy and acceptance and important thought and certainly not a place for men to tell women what they should or should not be saying as in it is the furthest possible thing from that.
so i will refrain from commenting on the phrase “ngl” any further.
certainly not a place for men to tell women what they should or should not be saying as in it is the furthest possible thing from that.
… you realize, I hope, that you’ve just suggested what I “should or should not be saying” while congratulating yourself on not doing it? Congratulations on that.
My disdain for phrases like “ngl”, “ftw”, “bae”, etc. have nothing to do with the sex/gender/anything else of the person using them.
I’m not talking about your disdain for my lexicon, but about your smugness at promising not to instruct me (or any other woman) on what to say while tacitly doing just that.
I dgaf about your disdain for my lexicon. <- that was a freebie just for you
<3
Ok. I apologize. Smugness was not my intent, but intent =/= results.
You don’t like the phrase “not gonna lie”? Or you just don’t like the acronyms used on websites? What an odd pet peeve, in either event…
I’ll cop to an acronym pet peeve. They’re clever, but also the enemy of simple clarity. I just pronounce them as words and move on. NGL? Niggling. SMDH? Smed-huh. Still don’t get ICYMI, but it’s hot out so an icy me is preferable today.
My Dad does that too, often in the middle of conversations, he just forgets (?) to @ reply me so he just sends the tweet out in continuation of the convo, lol.
My father is actually quite Twitter-adept, while I just can’t deal with that much information at once, get all flaily, and shut down. Mind you, my father is an ex-journalist who covered tech almost exclusively and then moved into PR where he worked mostly in training people in how to talk to the media and how to use social media, so it’s less that it’s amazing that my father can use social media competently and more that it’s astounding how bad Millennial nerd me is at it.
I inadvertently found my dad’s Twitter account. It has an egg icon and one tweet- a retweet of Gov’t Mule’s account talking about Island Exodus. He follows 21 accounts, all jam-band related.
My dad has had his account since 2009, still has an egg icon and follows five people: three family members, Tim Howard, and Luis Suarez.
Priorities- he has them.
My brother and SIL made a twitter account, handle “rebeccaandjohn”. This is what they’ve tweeted:
“We are tweeting.
(I replied to them) @paddlepickle Are you tweeting just at us, or can everyone see this?
We think everyone can see us.
(DM to me) Now nobody can see us.
(Six months later) This is our six month update. We are still tweeting.”
They’re only in their late 20s/early 30s but they are an excellent Mom and Dad, as you can see.
This is wonderful. If my dad tweeted, it would look exactly like this.
Brother has told me that he does use it sometimes, to follow baseball. I swear to God, he had never shown any interest in baseball his entire life until just a couple of months before he became a Dad.
TL;DR Totally followed your dad~ LET’S GET HIM UP TO 60K FOLLOWERS AND DRIVE MALLORY CRAZY!!!!
please share his twitter with us
My dad recently went to a Steely Dan concert (!) and when I asked him about it later, he spent a good twenty minutes complaining about how bad the traffic on the way to the concert was, and how he had to change routes a few times, and seriously the freeway was just a parking lot, he missed part of the opener, sheesh (!!); and then he said that the concert itself was underwhelming and didn’t sound as good as the album, and as for the other concert goers they were just a bunch of old farts dancing (!!!). My favorite part was discovering that the cause of the bad traffic was a One Direction concert nearby.
Truly amazing. How dad of him. My father always complains about concerts not sounding as good as the album, which I find hilarious.
Ugghhhhh I had a boyfriend who refused to see concerts because of this. I couldn’t convince him that people do not go to concerts because they expect pristine audio quality.
Of course he did. I realized that I was an old person when I was offered Prince tickets for free at the Superdome and replied ‘the traffic will be terrible. Thank you, no.’
And don’t we love him.
as for the other concert goers they were just a bunch of old farts dancing
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
HA
I showed my dad the the Dad Magazine that featured optimising crossbreezes the other day, and he immediately turned it into a fart joke.
(insert Orson Welles furiously applauding .gif)
MY LONG-LOST SIBLING
Mallory, I am just about literally gonna faint with that. Your dad is truly a hero amongst men.
seriously, that was a magically beautiful example of the noble dad in the wild.
One of my coworkers sent me a screenshot of my dad commenting on one of our company’s Facebook ads to talk about me.
DAD NOOOOOOO
I worked for a youth voter engagement organization during the 2008 elections, and on the day after the election I walked into the office to my very confused boss having a conversation with my Grandma about how I was personally responsible for the victory of Barack Obama. How she got the office number I will never know.
it’s my mother who has no sense of social media hierarchy.
i got a Fairly Important Message via ‘words with friends’ chat after we had JUST been texting about dumb stuff.
at least she no longer posts on my FB wall asking whether i’m coming to dinner on sunday.
My mom donated to my tiny nonprofit during our first fundraiser and then complained that there was no place on the form to tell people that she’d donated in honor of me. I was like “thanks mom, I’ll let the other six people in the organization know.”
This may be the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Did you resign immediately, or just change your name?
Still there, still using my real name, just a sentient puddle of mortification now.
I run a Facebook page for my program at work. I told my dad to like it (he lives in the same city and it’s relevant to his interests, shut up) but to please not write any comments on it. He immediately gave it a 5-star rating and started writing a review. I stopped him (yelled at him) before he could publish the review, but the page still has one lone rating by Dad Macabre.
@johnortberg
Our 10-year-old daughter recently said to my husband, “Dad, why do you always laugh at your own jokes? They aren’t funny.” ULTIMATE DAD STATUS ACHIEVED! We high-fived, and that confused the kids even more.
If this isn’t The Reason to have kids, I don’t know what is. One of my friends recently became a father, and he asked his FB friends to give suggestions of how to be a good father to a baby girl. I directed him to Roxane’s Butter essay from a couple months (?) ago, and added “always embarrass her by wearing sock-sandal combos to the grocery store and telling terrible jokes, and you’ll be set.”
my dad still does his song-and-dance routine when i go to the grocery store with him, even though it hasn’t embarrassed me for at least 10 years.
My dad used to “ride the pony” (gallop while pretending to hold reins with one hand and slap his butt with the other) down aisles in grocery stores, and I’m still horrified when he does it. (I’m 23 now.) What is the deal with dads in grocery stores???
Also, whenever my sister and I used to fight in the car, he would threaten to make us listen to “hillbilly butt-naked dancing music,” and to this day I have no idea what music he was talking about.
One of my fondest memories of my dad is the self-satisfied face he would make after he told a TRULY AWFUL joke.
He was, in fact, famous amongst not only my friends but also MY COUSIN’S FRIENDS for his terrible, terrible jokes.
This is amazing. DADISTOTLE!
More like, Rene DADcartes!
*glitter and applause*
As a dad who is also a former student both of Latin and philosophy, I give your Dad an A+ for that Dad Joke! With a gold star.
But I want to encourage him!
Remember the time Mallory’s dad showed up in the comments section of this very website? That was glorious.
WUT?! link!!!
http://the-toast.net/2014/02/04/lessons-learned-p…
oh
my
god.
That comment is what will sustain me through the rest of my extra-long workday.
Everything makes sense and I can see forever.
this was everything i hoped it could be and more. thank you, truly and forever.
MALLORY HAS RELATIONS IN MICHIGAN, I CAN DIE HAPPY
I love that that comment has 600+ likes (most liked comment on The Toast?)
None more dad.
It truly was.
Wait. What. WHAT.
That day was amazing.
It really was.
Wait, your dad is John Ortberg? How did I miss that? From one pro blogger pastor’s daughter to another, WORLDS COLLIDE.
I think I love your father
“At the game; wondering if this is the year of eschatological utopian glory for the Cubs.”
I hope so, I hope so.
I don’t know why you didn’t include my DADCARTES joke, which I thought was hilarious, and also you definitely lost your own charger and just accidentally stole someone else’s.
Dadcartes is A+
and you have achieved peak sibling
(though my siblings would tell me I pretended that stealing someone else’s was an accident, but they’re real bratty)
Mallory. Your dad is hot. But I’m not following him on twitter, because ovaries before brovaries.
hey thanks for telling me you think my dad is hot
Aww man, I’m totally gonna be banned comment of the day now.
I was just going to post that he’s hot
such a delicious thread. i loved reading it in real time
“Don’t strain.” = my life motto.
Followed.
Well, shoot. Peak Dad was my life goal. Grew a beard and everything. Going to have to settle for being Peak Uncle and introduce my niece to fireworks or something.
I think of Peak Dad as a constantly open goal, like running a marathon. All Dads can achieve Peak Dad if they really believe in their ability to make a truly terrible pun.
Does anyone else miss the days when Mallory’s icon was that turtle trying to eat a giant strawberry? Just me?
My dad is definitely not on Twitter*. It’s bad enough that he uses text-speak when he messages me.
*I always imagined that Twitter were this one area where my family didn’t go, and then realised that they visit my blog, and my Twitter feed is on there, and since then I’ve been going through my tweets, trying to decide whether I want them to know some of this stuff.
My dad is definitely not on Twitter*. It's bad enough that he uses text-speak when he messages me.
*I always imagined that Twitter were this one area where my family didn't go, and then realised that they visit my blog, and my Twitter feed is on there, and since then I've been going through my tweets, trying to decide whether I want them to know some of this stuff.
So can your dad be part of some Reform mafia that includes Marilynne Robinson and beat the crap out of John Piper or Mark Driscoll? Because seriously.
So my dad is close to Peak Dad, and also was a math teacher before he retired.
And a little while back I went to the farmer’s market and bought a pie, then realized that I had a bunch of cupcakes at home and was travelling in two days and felt bad. And was like “well, I’ve always been vulnerable to irrational pie. Although when you think about it, all pie is irrational because GOD DAMMIT I AM A NON-REPRODUCING FEMALE ENGLISH MAJOR HERE.”
But apparently dad jokes become lodged in your DNA.
"Excuse me, sir, do your sermons involve misandrony jokes and references to books from my beloved childhood?"