By Rick Kaempfer
They may not sound so sweet to you, but I think the sweetest words in the English language are “Yes, Dad.”
Until recently, I don’t think I had heard the words “Yes” and “Dad” in the same sentence for over a year.
My oldest son Tommy hasn’t said it since the late 90s. In fact, I think he’s eliminated the word “Yes” from his vocabulary completely. My youngest son Sean has probably said it, but only because his vocabulary is still limited and he never stops speaking. The law of averages says that eventually those two words could have ended up in the same sentence. If they did, however, it was purely accidental.
On the other hand, my middle son Johnny recently reintroduced this phrase into his everyday lexicon, and he is reaping the rewards.
“Johnny, please take your plate to the kitchen,” I said.
“Yes, Dad,” he replied.
I’m not kidding. He really said it. At first I was too stunned to speak. I thought he might be sick, so I checked his temperature. Nope. He was healthy.
“Do you know what you just said?” I asked.
“What?”
“You just said ‘Yes, Dad,” I pointed out.
“I know,” he told me.
After that, he started saying it more. The following week I had to check my own pulse to see if I hadn’t somehow died and gone to heaven during the following exchange. He and Tommy had just come home from school.
“Let’s get crackin’ on the homework,” I said.
“Yes, Dad,” Johnny replied. He took his books out of his backpack, sat down at the dining room table, and started doing his homework.
Seriously. Just like that. The first time I asked! No complaining. No whining. No hiding in his room hoping I would forget it was time to do homework. Just “Yes, Dad.”
Only his brother’s usual whining and complaining made me realize that I hadn’t actually gone to heaven.
I thought that the homework “Yes Dad” moment was the pinnacle, but that moment still hadn’t arrived. It arrived the following day. When he finished his homework without complaint after school (again!), I let him play on his Nintendo DS. This is something I usually don’t allow because it gets ugly when I try to get him to turn it off.
He had barely begun playing, when I finished cooking dinner. I knew it was hopeless, but I called up to his room anyway.
“Johnny, dinner’s ready. C’mon down!” I yelled.
I knew I would have to call up there at least three more times before getting really angry and storming up to the room. This was the normal routine. I would yell. He would pretend he didn’t hear. I would yell again. He would pretend he didn’t hear again. Then I would storm up to his room, demanding he turn it off, screaming “didn’t you hear me the first three times I called up here?”
This time it was different. Before I could even make it back to the kitchen, I heard the words from upstairs.
“Yes, Dad,” he said.
I tried not to get excited. I reminded myself that he was probably just muttering the words while Mario spun around the racetrack in Mario Kart. He probably didn’t even hear what I was saying—he was just saying ‘Yes Dad’ out of reflex, hoping it would buy him some time. I figured it would still be another twenty minutes before he came downstairs for dinner. The force of the videogame was the strongest force in the universe—it couldn’t be broken that easily.
But I was wrong. He was standing right next to me.
“What’s for dinner, Dad?”
“Johnny?”
“Yes, Dad.”
I was stunned. “Um, will you help me set the table?”
“Yes, Dad.”
And he did!
His brothers, ol’ Whats-his-name and Whose-it, haven’t even noticed this dramatic turnaround in Johnny. They haven’t noticed that Johnny’s plate gets more food, or that I let him stay up later, or that I call him “my dear, dear boy.”
Maybe they’ll notice the different treatment “Yes Dad” receives when they see I’ve moved all of the money from their college funds into Johnny’s.
“Want some money for college, boys?” I’ll ask.
“Yes, Dad,” they’ll reply.
“I knew you could say it,” I’ll say. “Sorry—too late.”
They should have discovered those magic words in 2007 when their brother Johnny did. Now if they’ll just help me carry Johnny’s throne into the living room, maybe it will occur to them before it’s too late.
If you missed any previous Suburban Man columns, all of them are here: http://suburbanmanarchive.blogspot.com
