Please. Stop.
Dear Father,
I am begging you. Stop calling my mobile phone from the house phone. Especially when I am at home. PLEASE. I know there are two flights of stairs to negotiate, and I know that in your growing decrepitude, stairs represent a tedium designed and hand-carved with a nail file out of a rock face somewhereby some young whippersnapper thousands of years ago to frustrate and tire people like yourself. But really. It is getting embarrassing.
You make a habit of ringing my phone when I am talking to a friend over the internet. Brb, I say, proudly utilising the hip-and-with-it language you will never ever understand, no matter how many slow texts you send to your ageing colleagues. The nosier of my online friends will ask, why, where are you going? I have recently started ignoring said nosy people, because it really IS embarrassing when I have to explain it is my father on the phone. And, being nosy, they demand to know, why, WHY does your father call you? WHY? Doesn't a grunt over the breakfast table every morning suffice in terms of communication?
Oh, he's, um... calling me from the home phone. Dinner's on the table. I have to explain. Which is embarrassing. Because questions are asked. As in, is he in possession of legs? I have to explain that yes, yes he is. And no, he doesn't have a fear of heights leaving him incapable of climbing more than five and a half steps.
You asked earlier on why I seemed so irritable when I answered my phone to you. In my irritableness, I could not formulate polite and unshouty sentences to explain to you that I had just finished meticulous fingernail painting, when over R.E.M. sounds the tinny strains of Dancing In The Moonlight, my ringtone for the last two years. And my phone was in my bag. I thought it was someone important, so I fished around carefully with my two fingers like tweezers, taking immense care not to let the paint touch the bag. And then it stopped ringing, so I sighed and left it. It restarted. I thought, ohhh, this important person is very persistent, it must be urgent. So, very painstakingly (sadly not painstakingly enough, I realised afterwards) I levered it from the bag at last and answered it. The screen said "Home". Indeed, it was your voice. And we were both at home, separated by a mere two flights. And my nail varnish was ruined. Yes, you could say I was slightly irritated.
Please. Stop. Thank you.
Your loving daughter,
xxx
I am begging you. Stop calling my mobile phone from the house phone. Especially when I am at home. PLEASE. I know there are two flights of stairs to negotiate, and I know that in your growing decrepitude, stairs represent a tedium designed and hand-carved with a nail file out of a rock face somewhereby some young whippersnapper thousands of years ago to frustrate and tire people like yourself. But really. It is getting embarrassing.
You make a habit of ringing my phone when I am talking to a friend over the internet. Brb, I say, proudly utilising the hip-and-with-it language you will never ever understand, no matter how many slow texts you send to your ageing colleagues. The nosier of my online friends will ask, why, where are you going? I have recently started ignoring said nosy people, because it really IS embarrassing when I have to explain it is my father on the phone. And, being nosy, they demand to know, why, WHY does your father call you? WHY? Doesn't a grunt over the breakfast table every morning suffice in terms of communication?
Oh, he's, um... calling me from the home phone. Dinner's on the table. I have to explain. Which is embarrassing. Because questions are asked. As in, is he in possession of legs? I have to explain that yes, yes he is. And no, he doesn't have a fear of heights leaving him incapable of climbing more than five and a half steps.
You asked earlier on why I seemed so irritable when I answered my phone to you. In my irritableness, I could not formulate polite and unshouty sentences to explain to you that I had just finished meticulous fingernail painting, when over R.E.M. sounds the tinny strains of Dancing In The Moonlight, my ringtone for the last two years. And my phone was in my bag. I thought it was someone important, so I fished around carefully with my two fingers like tweezers, taking immense care not to let the paint touch the bag. And then it stopped ringing, so I sighed and left it. It restarted. I thought, ohhh, this important person is very persistent, it must be urgent. So, very painstakingly (sadly not painstakingly enough, I realised afterwards) I levered it from the bag at last and answered it. The screen said "Home". Indeed, it was your voice. And we were both at home, separated by a mere two flights. And my nail varnish was ruined. Yes, you could say I was slightly irritated.
Please. Stop. Thank you.
Your loving daughter,
xxx
kiwiqueen - 4. Jul, 21:23
