One thing about parenthood that no one warns you about is how exasperatingly difficult it will be to make a simple phone call once you have kids. I’m no stranger to barking out crazy directions at my kids, like “no playing in the toilet water!” while trying to have an adult conversation on the phone with my mortgage company or my mother-in-law.
The phenomenon of being interrupted on the phone by kids has become so ubiquitous among __parents that it’s no wonder by a recent video illustrating the ridiculousness of it all has been viewed more than 478k times.
In the video, Anna Lind Thomas (the hilarious creator of HaHas for HooHas) conducts a mock phone call — during which her “children” interrupt in the most hilarious ways.
“Aiden! Stop poking her in the eye, I’m serious!” yells Thomas, to an imaginary child, who appears to be off-camera. After a brief pause, she continues: “Then use the blunt end of the stick and not the sharp end, got it?!”
Chatting with Babble (via email, obviously), Thomas shared the amusing inspiration for the video: An “insane” conversation she had while chatting on the phone with a rep for her Internet provider. During that particular phone call, she says her toddler had gotten into some trouble with the family dog.
“My tone must have been a cue for my toddler to act up,” she shares. “She took this long pole she found and started hitting our dog in the actual butthole with it. I had to yell at her to stop ‘messing with the dog’s butt!’ She didn’t, so I had to take it away.”
Her daughter ended up crying and screaming, and soon Thomas found herself looking for refuge where her daughter couldn’t interrupt her.
“I ended up locked in a closet so I could finish taking the costumer support person to task,” she continues. “Later I thought, ‘I have to make fun of this, it’s just too nuts.'”
The video has since gone viral, with moms and dads sharing their own comedic examples of basic phone calls gone totally awry, thanks the shenanigans of kids.
When asked if she was surprised by the reception it is getting, Thomas said:
“I’m not at all surprised by the response — I know so many moms can relate to this. The other day I was talking to my sister and she said, ‘If you fake like you’re dead again, I’m going to kill you! GOT IT?!’ right in the middle of us discussing a cake recipe. Hysterical.”
As parents, we’ve all been there. At some point, the embarrassment of having to throw out some doozies of a mom threat at our kids has been the inspiration for wacky stories we tell our friends later on. And for Thomas, that conversation with her Internet provider will live on in infamy.
“The funniest thing I’ve ever said while on the phone (with my Internet provider, no less) is what I mentioned above, ‘Stop messing with the dog’s butt!’ Over and over. I can only imagine what the rep was thinking on the other end!”
So, for those of you trying to call us __parents on the phone … please just text us instead, k?