So it’s a quiet night here in dispatcher land and I went down to the stairwell (monitered by a security camera For Our Safety) for a smoke. I’m tired, punchy, and hopped up on Pepsi. While I was sitting there, smoking a Kool (I swear to God it was only a Kool), I started thinking.
What if someone comes down the elevator?
What if that someone is a naked man?
What if the elevator doors open and a naked man and a goat come out?
I started snickering to myself.
What if I dispatch the call to an officer, and the officer asks me what the naked man and the goat are doing just as the naked man and the goat start copulating?
I giggled harder. For about 5 minutes, while I finished my cigarette, I sat on the stairs and giggled like a psychopath. I wasn’t laughing; I was giggling. I was still giggling when I came back to the comm room, causing my co-workers to eye me narrowly and edge their chairs away.
I explained what was so funny. It didn’t seem to comfort them.
I really really really hope the boss doesn’t watch that tape.
Same thing (sort of) happened to me yesterday when I was very tired. My little girl was singing us a song and I started thinking “she could sing that in front of the church.”
This became “she could start singing that in front of the church, then start giggling, then inexplicably burst into furious tears and stomp off.”
I had started laughing by now, but the whole idea of a chain of emotional explosions going off from a toddler had got me thinking. “She could sing that in front of the church, then start giggling, then burst into furious tears, then start giggling again and punch the pastor in the stomach, then stomp off screaming, then continue to run round the church screaming as they try to move on with the service, and gather a growing crowd of similarly aged tots behind her, all of whom are too slippery to be recaptured. Service ends by dissolving into smaller groups wandering off for coffee. Pastor last seen hiding behind piano.”
Which is roughly what’s likely to happen if we try to get her to do “angelic” in front of a large crowd. By the end I was laughing like a jackass, and it seemed I was laughing at my kid, who fortunately just started laughing too. My wife was most annoyed.