Gosh! I totally don't get this Napoleon thing

The time has come for me to accept that I've officially become my father. And the catalyst for this sad revelation is "Napoleon Dynamite."

When my wife and I saw the film during its initial theatrical run last summer, she found it funnier than I did. Oh, I laughed in a few places, but overall I felt it was merely OK. A two-star movie. Just fair.

The major flaw for me was not the lack of story, as cited by many other critics, but the central character — Napoleon himself — who started to grate on me after a while. I began to hope he'd be hit by the bus.

So I was completely unprepared for the phenomenon that has since become Napoleon Dynamite.

As I strolled through a local mall last week, I saw Napoleon T-shirts, mouse pads, "Vote for Pedro" stickers in several stores. Even a goth store — specializing in piercings, vampire collectibles, leather, chains and black eye makeup — had Napoleon posters prominently displayed in its window, right in the middle of its much darker merchandise.

And this is not a local phenomenon, just because we're connected to Idaho. This has gone national.

Maybe I should have seen it coming. There were early signs last summer.

Right after we saw "Napoleon Dynamite," my wife went to it again, this time with some grandkids in tow. And while she confessed later that it was not as amusing an experience for her the second time around, she was quite surprised that the grandkids didn't really laugh much.

But then, after they'd been home awhile, the kids started doing Napoleon. They would talk about their favorite scenes, they'd repeat lines of dialogue in Napoleon's low drawl, and they'd collapse into hysterical laughter.

It was 14-year-old Trenton (he's 15 now) who perfected it. He has the character down perfectly, becoming our own personal Napoleon Dynamite impersonator. (Though his younger brother Andrew is pretty good, too.)

We'd be talking about something, maybe ask him a question, and he'd answer in faux disgust: "Gosh!" And we'd all crack up.

Or, out of the blue, he'd say, "The liger is pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed, bred for their skills in magic."

Or, referring to a glass of milk one of the other kids was holding, he'd say, "I see you're drinking 1 percent. Is that 'cause you think you're fat?"

It's Trenton's deadpan delivery that sells it. And he's very funny.