Do you ever feel out of touch with the modern fads and doodads that spawn in social media and pop culture? Are you a parent who wants to understand your kids’ jokes so you can connect and become more involved with them?
If you’re anything like the person who paid to have this piece written, you feel out of touch with your children’s lives, borne of an abject desire to relive the meaningless happiness of feeling in touch with your family and community. With these half-hearted attempts to appeal to the humor of a younger demographic, you’ll have the all the tools you need to get a better impression of what goes on inside the minds of the next generation. Quoting dead memes and pop culture references, much to the embarrassment of you and your children, will make you even more cringeworthy and disconnected from your children’s lives than before!
Note: As the per the commissioner’s request, the core of this piece will be written entirely in haiku form – which we hired a middle-aged freelancer to do using a nifty text transcriber. We asked why (of course), and he said he longed for the bygone intimacy of reading poetry to his children at night when they “still loved him.” We asked how much creative liberty we could take with the haikus, and he responded with, “anything to alleviate my depression and feel comfortable inside your own household again.”
How’s punctuation
Supposed to work in haikus
Anyway, there’s not –
Oh, wait, it’s started?
Dang, this text-to-haiku thing
Is more complex than
Roses are red and
Violets are blue, this dog is
Too small for these boots
Let thou Beyblade rip
Put your Bakugan on the
Refrigerator
Uh… that one duck song
The one about grapes and that
Jerkish little duck
Damn, I’m already
Running out of ideas to
Fill the word quota
So, how ‘bout those Vines?
Compilations pop up on
YouTube so they must –
Still be relevant,
Even though people seem to
Complain about them
Tide pods, am I right?
Wait, that’s not a suggestion
Please kids, don’t eat them
Dogs do cute things, but
Not without some mention of
“Dog-go” anymore
…Wow, such haiku, much
Wordplay, congrations there fren
You did good a job
Alright, that seems like
A good place to wrap it up so –
Wait… what’s going on
I can’t change the text
Setting, it’s stuck on “haiku”
What is happening
Everything I’m wri–
Ting is turning into a
Haiku, how do I stop
I’m getting nervous
Oh hi anxiety, I
Was expecting you
Sweet divine figure
Someone get help, I can’t stop
It, too much haikus
Would you look at that
I’m uber-stressed out and the
Panic’s setting in
Is this how it ends?
Haiku death? I’m not getting
Paid enough for this
You know, this reminds Me of that time my compu-
Ter was on the fritz
And I turned it off
And on; that seems to work for
Most situations
I’m gonna try that
Here; I hope that doesn’t mess
Up anything with
And there you have it, folks. Just follow the steps laid out by these haikus and your kids will love you again in no time. Who knows, they might even learn something about you in return!
Written by Pete Muzawla, Staff Writer