Dad embarrasses 24-year-old daughter with wild sign at airport: 'Help'

Dad, is that you?

A Missouri father is making headlines over the elaborate — and occasionally mortifying — outfits he sports while picking up his graduate student daughter from the airport.

Courtney Payne, a 24-year-old currently studying at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has been documenting her periodic returns home from school since November 2018, when her father, Doug Payne, first enacted the head-turning tradition, she told People.

When Courtney arrived home at Kansas City International Airport that fateful month, she found her father holding up a sign that read "Kardashian," which, understandably, created some buzz in the terminal.

"Some people would ask me, 'Is it really the Kardashians?'" Doug recalled to People. "And I'll say, 'Yeah! It's Daniel Kardashian,' or somebody who's not even a Kardashian."

Photo: Twitter

Courtney shared a photo of her dad's creative sign on Snapchat captioned with the word "help" at the time and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from her friends, who found the sign amusing.

Naturally, Doug decided to keep up the bit, time after time his daughter would return home for a visit.

Since then, his signs have welcomed home the likes of Miss Oregon — which Doug says wasn't technically a lie, since his daughter is a "miss" and is living in Oregon — and even country star Miranda Lambert.

The costumes reached their peak this December, when Doug greeted Courtney in a full elf costume, holding a sign that read "Santa’s Naughty List" with his daughter's name written below.

Photo: Twitter

In footage of the father-daughter reunion, which was shot by Courtney's mother and later shared on Twitter, the embarrassed traveler can be seen entering the arrivals area of the airport to the tune of jingling bells.

"I cannot believe you," Courtney says, as her father urges her to come toward him.

"Is that you? Are you Courtney Payne on the naughty list?" the elven-clad father asks.

Naturally, the getup caused a bit of a scene in the terminal.

"Some people at the airport, when they first saw me as an elf, they probably thought I was a deranged individual," Doug told People. "But once they saw the sign and realized what I was doing, they became more approachable."

"It put a smile on their face and they were glad I did it," he added.

But people at the airport aren't the only ones smiling — photos of Doug's crazy outfits have since gone viral, with one of Courtney's tweets racking up over 5K retweets and more than 61K likes, along with tons of supportive comments.

"You are lucky to have such a lovely (and reliable) dad," one user wrote.

"KCI is such a weird airport. Thank your dad for making it the good kind of weird while he's there," said another.

What will Doug think of next?