My parents are pretty funny people. The thing that my mother does that always cracks me up is she’ll make some assertion (and a lot of the time, her assertions are spot on) that she’s not entirely sure is going to stand up in court, but when I jokingly point out some huge fatal flaw in the logic, she’ll get really cute and flippant and go, “oh, I don’t know, WHATEVER,” and it’s so adorable that I’m giggling about it for days.
My dad also does things that crack me up. Like he’ll call me up and leave a message that says, “BALLS, said the queen. If I had them, I’d be KING.” And then just hang up, because obviously I know to call him back. He also does this with, “I’m your hippy dippy weather man, with your hippy dippy weather, MAAAAN.” Usually these voicemails are followed by a beat where I can hear him grinning, and then he goes, “CALL ME!” and hangs up.
A few months ago, I was having a small but painful spat with a very good friend of mine, over how we’re both changing and that’s hard, and my parents happened to call in the middle of the day after the spat where all I could do was cry about it. After about an hour of talking and soothing from my mother, my dad gets on the phone (having obviously understood what the conversation was about) and goes, “you haven’t changed for ME. You’re exactly the same. You were a pain in the ass then, you’re a pain in the ass now, and I love you to death. Want me to come to New York and hang out with you and be your pal?” Aside from being hilarious, it also made me cry again from total sweetness.
So it’s pretty nice to join another set of parents that are equally hilarious. When we had that little meltdown about thinking we’d lost our AP document when we were leaving the Isle of Wight, and I came into my in-laws’ kitchen only to see Katina, grinning but obviously exhausted, start to crack up and say, “Merry CHRISTMAS!” It was pretty much the laughing balm we all needed.
And today, well, we had more immigration issues involving cards and renewals and setbacks and fees and none of it is really worth hearing about because it basically sucks but we’ll fix it. So when I got some random text from a random UK mobile phone that said (verbatim):
HAHAH WHAT A GREAT BOOK OPPORTUNITY! I LIVE WITH AN ALIEN! STUART! HAHAHAHA LOVE DD XX”
I was really confused. We’d just realized this immigration snag, we hadn’t blogged about it, and I didn’t know the number. But I had a sneaky feeling it was family. So I texted back, “HAHAH, I’m sorry to say I don’t know who this is!”
And two minutes later, got a reply text:
TINKIES BETTER HALF, YOU DOUGHNUT!
And I realized it was my father-in-law, Keith, who is another incredibly funny man who can immediately see the ridiculous side of everything, and reached out all the way across the ocean to make me laugh.
These two sets of parents haven’t met yet, but I’m realizing more and more every day that they’re going to freaking LOVE each other.