A Girl Texted Her Dad About “Lady Issues” & He Misinterpreted It In The Most Hilarious Way

Becoming an adult naturally changes your relationship with your parents. If you’re lucky, that means that you become closer and more like friends. You become, for example, like Kiera Platt and her dad — which means that, when you text your dad about “lady issues,” he responds with the dad joke to end all dad jokes. Pack it up, everyone; no one is ever going to top this one, so we may as well all just go home.

According to BuzzFeed, Platt, 25, and her dad, Mitch, both live in Long Beach, New York, a city in Nassau County on the Long Beach Barrier Island just south of Long Island. As is often the case for grown children and their parents these days, Platt and Mitch communicate frequently through text messages — which, it seems, is also one of Mitch’s preferred outlets for his comedic hijinks. As such, it’s not exactly surprising that, when Platt texted him recently to let him know she was leaving work early due to “lady issues” (or, as Bronwyn Isaac at Someecards put it, “the monthly blood offerings our uterus makes to Satan” — well played!), he responded with something… not at all accurate with regard to what Platt was actually talking about. She tweeted it, of course, so we could all revel in the ridiculousness:

HOWEVER. The texts are not, apparently, an example of a parent being honestly yet hilariously clueless; as Platt noted to BuzzFeed, her dad is “the master of dad jokes” and an expert at being “awkwardly funny.” No, these texts are a masterful instance of lighthearted trolling, as intentional as they are hilarious.

Twitter, of course, is loving it; here's just a small selection of how folks are responding:

Although that last tweet brings up an interesting question: Are Mitch's texts actually a dad joke or not?

I would actually argue that it’s not — or at least, not in the classic sense. The term “dad joke” may be defined variously as “an embarrassingly bad joke” (Urban Dictionary), “a term used to describe a corny or predictable joke, typically a pun” (Wikipedia — yes, there’s a Wikipedia page for “dad joke”), or “an unoriginal or unfunny joke of a type supposedly told by middle-aged or older men” (Oxford Dictionaries — you know you’ve arrived when Oxford has taken it upon itself to define you). I actually don’t think Mitch’s joke is embarrassingly bad, predictable, or unfunny; it’s also not really a pun, which dad jokes often — although not always — tend to be.

Indeed, Mitch seems to have his own unique brand of humor, as a brief look through the various other texts Platt has posted to Twitter demonstrate. He does occasionally bust out a classic dad joke:

But by and large, his jokes tend to be deadpan:

Fueled by typos:

Purposefully obtuse:

Random:

Or irreverent:

(That one is my favorite, by the way.)

All of these texts — and there are plenty more where they came from if you scroll through Platt’s Twitter feed — seem to suggest that there are dad jokes, and then there are Mitch’s dad jokes. Nobody does dad jokes the way Mitch does… which is exactly what makes his so special. Indeed, Platt told BuzzFeed, “My favorite thing about my relationship with my father is the banter we create between each other. There’s no line of what’s appropriate or not. The jokes are just always funny. That’s the way it is.” She added, “He’s the best father in the entire world and I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.”

Also, his response to going viral is the best:

With all due respect to BuzzFeed, I have been laughing about "buzz dead" for about 10 minutes straight.

For the curious, the rest of Platt’s family is equally hilarious, both unintentionally and on purpose. Here’s one from her mom:

(That would be a dab — just in case you were still wondering, Mom!)

And her sibling regularly makes appearances on her Twitterfeed, too:

All in all, they seem like a delightful bunch. Thanks for brightening up the internet’s collective week, Platt family. Enjoy your moment in the sun.