A father and daughter sit on a blanket in the park.
Daughter: Papa! PAPA! HEY, PAPA!
Father: Yes, what?
Daughter: I asked you a question.
Father: Oh, really? That’s ironic.
Daughter: Don’t change the subject: I asked you a question.
Father: I didn’t hear you; what was the question?
Daughter: How could you not hear me? I’m sitting next to you!
Father: That’s the irony.
Daughter: No, I asked you what those people are doing over there.
Father: I didn’t hear you because I was thinking about when I was little, this one day—I was about eight years old, I guess—and I was playing with a walkie talkie at my cousin’s house. He was in the front yard of his house and I was in a treehouse down the street from him. We were talking together on the walkie talkie and a car drove by and suddenly we heard this voice on the walkie talkie saying “WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOING!” The voice had such authority and such punishment in it, that I screamed with pleasure into the walkie talkie: “DAD, IS THAT YOU?” And then I sprinted back to the house because I thought that my dad was there and had condescended to speak with me via the walkie talkie.
Daughter: And did he?
Father: No, the car that drove by was the police; the police have walkie talkies, too, and can talk to people.
Daughter: The police talked with you?
Father: Yes, my dad was nowhere to be seen, but I had thought that, finally, after all these years of completely ignoring my existence other than inflicting verbal or physical pain upon me, my father had condescended to play a simple game with me. Me, of all people! Haha!
Daughter: That’s silly.
Father: Yes, and ironic.
Daughter. I don’t know ironic.
Father: It means that I was sitting here thinking about an emotionally distant father and, in doing so, I was an emotionally distant father. Haha!
Daughter: Okay, but what are those people doing over there?
The end.