04-10-06: scolding

Seeing as how I'm going to be 35 in seven days, I can say that it's been a long time since I've been scolded by my dad.


The other day, as you may recall, I injured myself from laughing too hard at something silly my mom and sister-in-law said. The pain incurred from said injury is made exponentially excruciating when I cough or laugh.

On Wednesday, I was online and was talking to John via IM. He was eating lunch at his new favorite lunchspot, and I was playing with my laptop in the TV room with my dad in the room. John and I were yapping about whatever, and were generally making each other laugh and snarf-- there was silliness in the air. I commanded him several times not to make me laugh because I couldn't handle it. He understood.

Later in the conversation, I asked him if he saw the picture of the lost pigeon poster I'd sent him, and he asked if it was a knock-off of the lost frog thing.
I said, "What lost frog thing?"
And he said, "Ya know, the kid who lost his frog-- that thing from 2004-ish."
I said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
He said, "Race ya!" which of course means, let's see who's faster with the Google.
Two seconds later I stumbled upon http://lostfrog.org. I had never seen it before. I got three clicks into it and almost hemorrhaged because I was laughing so hard.

Like I said before, when I laugh the pain is unbearable, so I was crying a full-on weeping cry. And this wasn't the usual Jill-esque "holy crap that's so funny I'm crying" thingy as I'm prone to do; this was "Holy crap, this hurts so bad that I am crying from the pain." But I was also laughing because I was looking at this frikkin' Uncle Sam poster with some Hopkin Green Frog reference on it and I almost ejected my spleen.

I was paralyzed from this crying/laughing fit. I was shaking. My dad saw me in this state and was mortified... he started off calmly enough, but eventually he actually yelled at me.

"What is going on??" he said.
All I could do was gesture towards the screen and whisper, "It's funny!"
So he said, "Jill, just shut the laptop!"
I said, "I can't! It's funny!" Tears were streaming down my face. I wasn't calming down either, because in the IM window, John just kept saying stuff like, "PS, I'll find my frog" and it would slay me.
My dad started getting genuinely angry.
"Jill, what did I say? SHUT IT!"
And again, I just sat there and cried.
"SHUT THE DAMN LAPTOP! NOW!"
This of course made me laugh harder, because let's face it, it's now completely ridiculous.
I didn't/couldn't shut the laptop. And John kept typing. And I kept laughing. So I kept crying.
"JILL, DAMMIT! STOP BEING STUPID! I SAID SHUT IT!" He was really mad!
But the only thing I could say was, "It's funny! It's funny!"
"I don't care how funny it is! You're hurting yourself! Shut that damn laptop! Now!"
"Bahahahahahaha, waaaaaaaaaah!"

I had a doctor's appointment at 2pm, so I closed the IM conversation and tried to walk away to settle down.

In the car, my dad was silent. Finally he said, "I can't believe you would do that to yourself. I mean come on, Jill. Really." We got up to the waiting room and I got a little mental micro-image of "Love, Terry" in my head and I started giggling again. My dad shot me a look.

When I got home from the doctor and was finally composed, I sat back down at my laptop. I had the window lostfrog.org window minimized, and the window label in my taskbar just said, "PS, I'll find" and seeing that alone sent me into another round of hysterics and tears. Which made my dad yell again. "JILL, DAMMIT! WHAT DID I SAY?"

John was back online, so I told him that he got me in trouble. He said, "Great, now your dad hates me," or something to that effect. I told him that if he ever meets my dad, he should be sure to stuff the back of his pants with a hard-cover book to pad the Dad-whoopin'.

Anyhoo, I will know I am successfully and sufficiently healed when I can get through more than 5 clicks of the lostfrog site.



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