When I started writing this column six months ago, I made a promise to my kids that I may have to break.

I told them I would never write anything that embarrasses them, but I may have to reconsider that and start some good old-fashioned embarrassing.

I don’t mean I’ll embarrass them in a Congressman Anthony Weiner sort of way but in a much better, Dale Price sort of way.

Who is Dale Price? Look at this column’s accompanying pictures, and you will see this hilarious Salt Lake City dad who came up with a truly unique way of playfully embarrassing his 16 year old son, Rain.

As chronicled in his family’s blog, Wave at the Bus, Dale dressed up in a different, wacky, outlandish and creative costume to wave at his teenaged son’s school bus every morning as it passed his house.

That’s 170 days of a dad tweaking his boy.

Please take a look at the blog, especially if you need a great belly laugh. You’ll see how Dale, a stay at home dad who is a very involved parent, surprised Rain every morning with a different costume, each one more outlandish then the last.  You can imagine a teenager being horrified at just the thought of his mom and dad waving bye-bye to him on the first day of the school year like he was a kindergartener. But when you hear that it was followed by day after more mortifying day of costumed waving, you can feel what Dale’s son must have felt in the pit of your own stomach.

But isn’t that sort of what a dad—or a mom, for that matter—is sometimes supposed to do? My dad embarrassed me, whether it was waving to strangers in the next car, or singing loudly even though he couldn’t carry a tune, or getting teary faster than the other dads at emotional moments.

I’m sure the ways your dads and moms embarrassed you are readily accessible memories for each of you as well.

The funny thing is, no matter what, Dale kept waving; and Dale’s son, Rain eventually … waved back.

So did the bus driver and Rain’s classmates. And a lot of the world chuckled along when news of the Price family’s blog spread, across U.S. media and to places as far away as Brazil, Japan, Australia and Hong Kong. People laughed—and metaphorically waved back—along with the joke.

Dale’s wife, Rochelle, wrote the text that accompanies each picture on their blog, and from the funny way she describes each day’s costume it’s clear that this is a family that knows how to laugh. Rochelle even describes her son as a 4.0 Honors student who is “genetically predisposed to having a good sense of humor.”

Perhaps therein lies the lesson about what Dale’s school-year-long stunt taught. Humor is a wonderful family staple. Teaching your kids how to laugh at themselves by laughing at our own selves is an amazing gift. When they can withstand the embarrassment enough to see you as a person who can stand up to play the fool on occasion and thrive, it shows them the depth of your character and helps build theirs.

Of course you have to know your own child’s boundaries and tolerances, in order to get them to expand those tolerances a bit. But laughter, as they say, is such great medicine. So let’s see what I’ll cook up for my kids…and I’ll be sure to write about it!