Death By Children

When the boy was little, I used to tickle him constantly. I’d just go to town on him because he laughed so loud and giggled so hard that I’d crack up.

Unfortunately, what made me crack up made him cack up and at least once a day I’d send him into puke inducing giggle fits.

I should have recognized this as a morbid harbinger of things to come but I didn’t really think much of it.

I love making my kids laugh. Almost as much as I love to threaten them with instant maiming if they so much as breathe heavy during 30 Rock. They pretty much live a life ping-ponging between uncontrollable laughter and panic stricken terror. In fact, I have total control over their funny bones and can make them laugh even when they are move-away-and-change-their-name mad at me.

The other night at dinner I had them going at dinner so hard [My Attorney] had dialed 9 1 and had her finger poised thinking they were going to choke. I’ve made them go boneless with mirth. The first time it happened to Roon he sagged to the ground in a spineless heap and I had to shovel him into the minivan.

But the kid’s twelve. I thought the boneless pee pee days were really behind me but this week I scored big. Before the kid went to school, I made him laugh so hard he hosed his highwaters. And instead of being embarrassed, this just made him laugh more which led to, um, further liquidity.

I’m not proud of making . . . my son, um . . .

Who am I kidding. They should give awards for this. Man, if you can make your kids laugh so hard they pee when they’re TWELVE you’re practically a Jedi.

I found this out when I was driving a car full of scouts home from summer camp. Four hour drive that finishes in Chicago so here’s what happens. You get half way home, stop at Taco Bell and eat until your ribs hurt because you’ve been eating nothing but gruel and bugs and suddenly someone offers you UNLIMITED beef meximelts and eight gallons of Mountain Dew, all of it consumed in a lip-smacking, growling, teeth baring melee that lasts just as long as it takes to skid to a stop into the back end of 5 o’clock traffic nine miles from home.

At this point, their bladders are Hindenburgs. And I start telling jokes. Stupid jokes. Dumb jokes. Repetitious, idiotic, scatalogical, pee pee, poo poo, buttcentric, crap that would make the 3 Stooges look like Rohdes scholars. And they’re screaming, pleading, begging me to shut up. They were laughing through tears of rage. I actually thought they were going to foul the car.

I wish I could do this to adults, use my Jedi joke powers to make them piss themselves. Sure would make WalMart fun.