Utah Dad Embarrasses Teen Son Every Day With 170 Costumes
June 8, 2011 -- For a teenager, nothing is more mortifying than a parent. Unless that is a parent in a costume waving to you as you pass by with your friends on the school bus.
That would make Dale Price a top candidate to be the most embarrassing dad in America.
Dale Price, of American Fork, Utah, has spent the past school year waving at his high school son's school bus every day while dressed in costumes as a lampshade, Elvis, and Santa, just to name a few.
See: Photos of Dad's Most Embarassing Costumes
The mortification for Price's son, Rain, began the first day of his sophomore year of high school when Price's wife, and Rain's mother, Rochelle, realized that for the first time ever the school bus would drop off Rain on their street.
"The bus route changed," Dale said today on "Good Morning America." "For the first time it came down our street, so we went out to wave."
"After that, it was game on."
Rain was not quite as amused as his dad when he looked out the window of his school bus those first days.
"Horrified," Rain said on "GMA," remembering his initial reaction. "Just embarrassment."
That reaction was all the prodding Dale needed to turn an embarrassing wave into a 170 day, yearlong ritual of embarrassment for his teenage son.
Since that fall day Dale has waved at his son every day in a different outlandish costume.
"After the first day I overheard Rain pleading to his mom, 'Mom, please, please, please do not let Dad wave at the bus tomorrow," Dale said.
"So I heard that and I said, 'Son, I love you and I'm going to go back and wave at the bus tomorrow,' and it snowballed from there."
Costumed Dad Embarrasses Teen Son Every Day for 170 Days
Instead of waving at the bus in the afternoon, the dad dressed up each morning and sent his son off with a dose of morning humiliation.
Dale's costumes started out modestly. The second day of school he showed up in a football helmet and jersey, but the months that followed saw him dressed as everything from a giant chicken to a blushing bride, Batgirl, a superhero, a Star Trek devotee, and the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
"At first it was shocking and mortifying," Raid said of that initial view of his dad from the school bus window. "The last few months of school were when it turned from embarrassing to funny."
But Rain's good-sport attitude towards his dad's costumed antics only extends so far.
"The 'Little Mermaid' was the lowest," Rain told "GMA." "Those [the cross-dressing costumes] are the only ones that have ever scarred me."
"When you see him cross-dressing," he said, "you can't expect a normal response."
Dale's most elaborate costume is also his favorite. It was Day 167. He brought an old toilet bowl onto the neighborhood street and sat on it reading a newspaper, waving to the bus as it rolled by.
"It came out of the blue and I laughed when I thought of it," he said. "It wasn't something you were going to see every day."
