It Doesn’t Seem Funny Anymore
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In high school, when Her Hotness and I were dating, we once drove to Salt Lake with my sister. It was a quick hop on the freeway—30 minutes each way. I don’t remember why we went, but I was the driver. My sister and Kim were too young to have their driver’s permits.
Her dad didn’t want her to come along. I was a teenage boy with free access to a vehicle and drove like most unaccountable teenage boys: fast and immortal. Her dad was a worrier, I thought. Pfft. Didn’t he know I was a good driver? What couuld happen?
Somehow during the drive we decided it would be funny to play a trick on Kim’s dad when we got home. Sis would call him and say there had been an accident and that she was calling from the hospital. She would say that Kim was badly hurt and that he better get here quick. He would freak out! Won’t that be funny?? That’ll teach him to be a worrier!
We got home and called my future father-in-law. That was the day I learned about my sister’s native acting talent. Holy cow! She got on the phone and put on a sob and a wail that would have curled the toenails of any parent unlucky enough to get the call. There had been an accident, she said between gasps for air. Kim and I were hurt and in the ER, and he better come quick. We giggled and tittered, imagining his frantic search for the car keys even as he stammered on the phone for more information. Which hospital? he wanted to know. That’s all he needed to know because he was a man and the only thing he understood was that he had to get there. Right now.
Ha Ha! We are so funny! Sis couldn’t hold up the charade for long and broke out laughing. Her Hotness got on the phone, laughing, saying it was all a joke because he had been worried about her riding with me. Ha ha ha, got you, Dad! Just kidding!
He laughed it off and said no more about it. If I ever wondered, that alone proves that he’s a better man than I’ll ever be. If Girl 15 ever pulled a stunt like that, she would be grounded until she’s 19, and I would have a long, loud chat with the little punk of a boyfriend that was in on it. I’d scare him so bad he wouldn’t dare text message her again, let alone get in a car with her. A pubescent squirt who thinks that’s funny and then laughs in my face is clearly not deserving of my daughter and I’d see to it that they never saw each other again.
WTF? I mean, seriously. That is so not funny in so many ways, and I only just realized it this week. My worst fear, bar none, is the death or serious injury of one of my children. For 30 long seconds all those years ago, I helped put a good man in that hell. For a joke. To be funny. To rub his existing fear for his daughter in his face! Why he even let her continue to see me after that, I don’t know, but I’m glad he did. Like I said, he’s a better man than me.
October 1st, 2007 at 4:27 pm
You did indeed think you were immortal to tease a girl’s dad like this.
Gosh, if only we had our lives to live over again … I think there’d be more stuff that I wouldn’t repeat that stuff that I would!
October 1st, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Me too. I like to think it’s a filtering issue, though, not a stupidity issue. (By filtering, I mean we call up errors more easily than times we got it right). I mean, surely I wasn’t always that stupid??
Regret has been a common theme for me lately…can’t be healthy. I wonder what a life coach would say about wallowing in regret and how to stop it?
October 1st, 2007 at 10:00 pm
He not only let you live but he let you marry her??!!!
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Hey, I never claimed that our marriage was based on merit. There have been several steps along the way to which I can point and say, “There but for the grace of ______ go I.”
That prank was one stupidity in a long line of stupidities. Some people think it’s great growing up just around the corner from your future wife and in-laws; it’s not. They saw my adolescent dumbassery in all its glory.
Yeah, and still let me marry her…I don’t understand it, myself.
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Perhaps he was having a senior moment when you asked for her hand and forgot about the dumbass kid that used to live round the corner…
…that, or he likes you…
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:12 pm
He does now because he has to…I’m the father of his grandchildren. But he didn’t have to back then. It’s a mystery to me.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Joe - fair call - he didn’t have to. Still doesn’t, to be fair. Methinks he wants to, because he sees how happy you make his daughter and his grandkids, and you aren’t too bad a job of it.