# My nineteen-year-old son went to the beach and while he was gone I moved away **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 23, 2004, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538 "2004-07-23T16:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/61 "2004-07-23T22:24:15Z")
> [@Rufus Xavier](#): > > “Guess what?” > “What?” > “Chicken butt!!” You forgot the rest: "You know why ??? “” "CHICKEN THIGH !!! " ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/62 "2004-07-23T22:56:57Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > But how many people here know Anita, or could reasonably be expected to? Given the tone of the post, however, and given that it was quickly clear that the people who do know her were finding it funny, most people with an ounce of sense should have been able to figure out that it was a joke. ---
**Author:** ![pyrrthon1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@pyrrthon1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pyrrthon1)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/63 "2004-07-23T23:30:03Z")
> [@John Carter of Mars](#): > > Go you! Believe it or not, there are three people working in this office today, and two of us were talking about how to pull something like this off. > > Thanks for the clue. 🆒 I know this is all a joke, but why do people like you even bother having kids? ---
**Author:** ![Ghanima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/64 "2004-07-23T23:35:55Z")
OK I can see this train is about to jump the tracks, but I have to say that for those of us who are not _in the know_ it was not obvious at all. I certainly enjoy a good joke but it wasn’t clear for a while what exactly happened. So please don’t go insulting people for not personally knowing **Anita** or who her friends are. If the situation was made clear in the first place, I don’t think there would have been nearly as many posts wondering what in the hell was going on or why the OP was funny. Commence train wreck. ---
**Author:** ![pyrrthon1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@pyrrthon1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pyrrthon1)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/65 "2004-07-23T23:44:14Z")
> [@Ghanima](#): > > OK I can see this train is about to jump the tracks, but I have to say that for those of us who are not _in the know_ it was not obvious at all. I certainly enjoy a good joke but it wasn’t clear for a while what exactly happened. > > . Oh I know it’s a joke, but thing is…it isn’t really. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/66 "2004-07-23T23:49:33Z")
> [@pyrrthon1](#): > > I know this is all a joke, but why do people like you even bother having kids? Let me understand this then - if we make jokes about our kids, we shouldn’t have even bothered to have them?? Guess I shouldn’t say how my husband and I moved 800 miles away from our only daughter and she’s just 18. Not only that - we left the dog with her!!! Seriously. She didn’t want to leave Florida, and she’ll be starting college next month, and since we’ve been living on our boat, we don’t have room for the dog… Aw, forget it. No way I can make that funny, and apparently I shouldn’t… **Anita** , FWIW, I got a chuckle from your OP, moreso because my daughter lives 800 miles from your son, so I don’t have to worry about an accidental meeting between them… 😛 😃 ---
**Author:** ![pyrrthon1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@pyrrthon1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pyrrthon1)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/67 "2004-07-24T00:12:42Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > Let me understand this then - if we make jokes about our kids, we shouldn’t have even bothered to have them?? > > Guess I shouldn’t say how my husband and I moved 800 miles away from our only daughter and she’s just 18. Not only that - we left the dog with her!!! > > Seriously. She didn’t want to leave Florida, and she’ll be starting college next month, and since we’ve been living on our boat, we don’t have room for the dog… Aw, forget it. No way I can make that funny, and apparently I shouldn’t… > > **Anita** , FWIW, I got a chuckle from your OP, moreso because my daughter lives 800 miles from your son, so I don’t have to worry about an accidental meeting between them… 😛 > > 😃 Fair enough. Maybe I took it too personally. My parents used to joke with their friends (in front of me) how they wanted to move one day while I was at school. Guess how often I visit them? ---
**Author:** ![Shaolinrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Shaolinrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaolinrabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/68 "2004-07-24T00:13:15Z")
For the record, I don’t know any of these people and I got it right off the bat from the OP. I’m not psychic or anything either. I think at some point you need to accept that it’s time to get out a bit more and interact with people, otherwise you miss complex social cues like smilies and winks and replies to the OP. Seriously, common social cues to humor include laughing, joking, smiling and winking. If you’re still unsure whether a joke hs been told, look at the people around you for the following signs of humor: Laughing, high fives, winking, and smiling. If you are ever in the midst of such a crowd, it can be safely assumed that there has been humor. Humor: that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous. The mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous. Something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing. _Definition courtesy of Merriam Webster_ Humor is a very subjective thing, but the fact that something horrible has happened to someone somewhere does not mean that there is no longer humor in the subject matter. If it did, we’d never laugh at anything. Humor can be found in any subject if you look, even racism, and the holocaust. Fans of Mel Brooks are already familiar with this concept. Ever seen someone make a popular joke about rape? Sure you have, if you’ve ever seen a comedy about prison. There’s a rape joke in every prison comedy I’ve ever seen. Sometimes we laugh at the most horrible aspects of ourselves and our history. It’s a common bond, and it takes power from painful events. Everyone can’t do it of course, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t humor there, or that no one should laugh. Maybe I’m a cold callous individual because I enjoy Mel Brooks films, or because I often laugh at things that other people wouldn’t. Who knows? But it’s served me well so far, and I enjoy finding humor, even in my own painful experiences. ---
**Author:** ![Shaolinrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Shaolinrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaolinrabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/69 "2004-07-24T00:16:34Z")
> [@pyrrthon1](#): > > Fair enough. Maybe I took it too personally. My parents used to joke with their friends (in front of me) how they wanted to move one day while I was at school. Guess how often I visit them? I’m assuming they weren’t actually joking then, or that you felt they were serious on some level. My father’s favorite joke was that he’d gotten me a scholarship to an orphanage. I’d heard it thousands of times, from childhood, and always found him to be a warm and loving father. He remained my best friend until the day that he died. Because it was a joke. If was was truly a joke, it was meant to be humorous, and therefore, not harmful to me in any way. I’m not making fun of your pain here, but there must have been bad blood besides a simple one liner. ---
**Author:** ![AbbySthrnAccent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb9ed0/32.png) [@AbbySthrnAccent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AbbySthrnAccent)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/70 "2004-07-24T00:17:02Z")
> [@Ghanima](#): > > OK I can see this train is about to jump the tracks, but I have to say that for those of us who are not _in the know_ it was not obvious at all. I was not “in the know” and I knew it was a joke from the tone of the op. ---
**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/71 "2004-07-24T00:30:17Z")
Darnit, **Anita**. Had I not had the picnic on Saturday til the wee hours, we could have been really inventive! I’m envisioning putting all of Kyle’s stuff in the attic or someplace else, and leaving a t-shirt which reads: MOM SOLD ALL OF MY STUFF ON EBAY, THEN MOVED AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT ---
**Author:** ![SandyHook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@SandyHook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandyHook)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/72 "2004-07-24T01:17:30Z")
When we left Green River, Wyoming to move to Laramie Ms Hook was worried about breaking the news to the little Little Hook. I told her I’d take care of it. Throwing my arm over his shoulder and hugging him to my side I said, “Well, son if you’re ever passing through Laramie, hell, stop and see us.” ---
**Author:** ![START](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@START](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/START)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/73 "2004-07-24T01:42:09Z")
> [@Anita Vacation](#): > > No, really! When he came home, the house was empty except for his clothes and bed. I didn’t tell him my new address; I swear, I’m not making this up! > > It can be done, folks. This is the stuff of legend, and I’m proud to say I pulled it off! 🆒 What a mean thing to do…he is never going to talk to you again ☹ ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/74 "2004-07-24T01:51:11Z")
START, it’s sometimes advisable to read the entire thread, not just the OP, before responding. 😉 Count me in as another person who was not “in the know” who also figured that it had to be a joke. I wasn’t _sure_, but I kept on reading to get more info, because it just didn’t make sense for it to be flat-out serious. ---
**Author:** ![leafrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cab0a1/32.png) [@leafrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leafrog)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/75 "2004-07-24T01:52:27Z")
**START** , it’s always a good idea to read the whole thread before responding. And for what it’s worth, I could tell from the OP that **Anita** was goofing. And didn’t we hear the story of Kyle’s trip to climb Kilamanjaro last year? ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/76 "2004-07-24T01:52:59Z")
Er… **START**? Have you bothered to read the thread? It was a joke. He knew she was moving, and that she would be gone when he returned; he was moving out as well. They’ve talked on their cell phones since, even. ---
**Author:** ![leafrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cab0a1/32.png) [@leafrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leafrog)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/77 "2004-07-24T01:53:51Z")
Jinx, owe me a coke. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/2bfe46/32.png) [@John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Carter_of_Mars)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/78 "2004-07-24T02:13:56Z")
> [@pyrrthon1](#): > > I know this is all a joke, but why do people like you even bother having kids? If you know it’s a joke, why did you find it necessary to make a snarky remark? ---
**Author:** ![START](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@START](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/START)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/79 "2004-07-24T02:57:34Z")
> [@Kat](#): > > Er… **START**? Have you bothered to read the thread? It was a joke. He knew she was moving, and that she would be gone when he returned; he was moving out as well. They’ve talked on their cell phones since, even. Duuuuuuuuuuh…I seriously didn’t get it and I read the whole OP but that makes sense now…at first I was thinking what a mean mother :smack: ---
**Author:** ![RingOfFire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e47774/32.png) [@RingOfFire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RingOfFire)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538/80 "2004-07-24T03:08:21Z")
> [@Anita Vacation](#): > > The date of my move was up in the air when he made plans to go to the beach. When he drove away, he knew that I’d be gone when he came back. So which was it? Did you sneak away or did he know? 😕 Though from your tone I wish your son the best. He’ll be a lot better off on his own :wally [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-nineteen-year-old-son-went-to-the-beach-and-while-he-was-gone-i-moved-away/256538.md?page=5)