For someone who made a living out of speaking extemporaneously, my father was notorious in our family lore for his hilarious verbal slip-ups. The apple falleth not far from the tree.

Dad loved words and puns and rhyming and alliteration and all those fun little things that make language so entertaining. He made a game of rhyming children’s names whenever he addressed them, which was cute…to a point. Church members with toddlers laughed approvingly when he greeted little “Jenny-Wenny” or “Mattie-Battie.” Then one day a blue-haired church lady brought her grandson named “Mitch” to the Sunday morning service. She introduced little Mitch to my dad who, without missing a beat, tousled the tot’s hair and said, “Hey, there, Mitchy-Bitchy!” shocking the blue-haired grandmother and prompting my mom to impose a moratorium on any sort of name-rhyming.

Dad also regularly stored up random nuggets of word wizardry that he found amusing, to unpack at some future opportunity for cleverness. Funny movie lines were a favorite go-to, but sometimes his recycled version resulted in an embarrassing faux pas for him and hilarity for anyone in the immediate vicinity. While I was in college, I had to be hospitalized with a kidney stone. Dad came to visit and when the nurse popped in to see if I needed anything, Dad piped up and said, “I believe she might need a cup of coffee.”

Playing along with my Dad’s request, the nurse asked, “Oh, really? Well, how does she like her coffee?”

Mangling a reference to a line in Airplane, Dad said, “She likes her coffee like she likes her men…black and straight.”

I was mortified enough to pass my kidney stone and crawl out of the hospital on all fours. “DAD!!! Oh, my God!” The nurse just laughed and went to get his coffee, but Dad was too embarrassed to face her again and slunk out before she could deliver his black, straight beverage.

Years later, and several months into my first pregnancy, I became the proverbial apple to Dad’s tree with a legendary verbal gaff of my own. Half-way through undressing for a pelvic exam, I was unexpectedly interrupted by my doctor entering the room a few minutes too soon. He backed out, waited a few beats, and then returned with apologies for barging in before I was ready.

Unintentionally channeling my Dad, I said, “That’s OK…I guess it takes me a little longer to get my pants off than it used to.”

The doctor laughed so hard, he could barely finish the exam, and I realized Dad’s genes gave me more than just red hair and a tendency to procrastinate.