DAD BOD

I’m 13 years old and my family and I are going to my grandma’s house for Sunday dinner. As I enter, I’m greeted with the smell of a thousand grandmas. It’s as if my grandmother was baking, thought that it smelled bad, and mixed up her own perfume bottle for the Febreze again. It’s choking at first, but my lungs adapt quickly.

The house’s interior is a kaleidoscope of the color brown refracted into all of its different variations, from the lightest khaki to the darkest chocolate, the kind you only enjoy after your palate fully develops in your mid 20s.

There’s so much wood paneling along the walls that I can almost smell the cedar. Brown shag carpet so thick that it gives each of your toes a massive bear hug with every step. No piggies will be going to the market today. And when the light hits the carpet just right through the single-pane windows, it fades to a color only the biggest Texas Longhorn fan could enjoy.

​My grandma offers me a brownie as I am enveloped in the empty, oversized recliner that matches the one from which my grandpa silently watches the Dallas Cowboys game. My grandma follows up the brownie offer with a class of milk which I decline. I’m 13 now. Geez, Grandma. I’m not a little kid anymore.

Then, from the dining room, something catches my eye. The dining room table and china cabinet have been replaced with a band playing some psychedelic tunes. I rub my eyes to ensure that I am not hallucinating. Did Grandma put something in these brownies? Surely not.

The band doesn’t seem to be out of place though. In fact, I start to even believe that this band has always been here. They blend right in as they softly serenade me with their groovy melodies. No, this is not a ghost band that died in the tragic orgy accident of 1973. No, siree. This band is actually a band I’ll encounter in 2021.

​This is Dad Bod.

Dad Bod is my grandmother’s house: perfectly preserved from the 70s. I’m convinced that they were cryogenically frozen for 50 years and brought back now to remind us all that we need to be more groovy.

Conclusion: Smoke some weed and enjoy.