Dear Ferret Folks- My father and I are not very close. He moved far away after he and my Mom divorced, I don't see much of him. We don't have a strained relationship, we just don't touch bases very often. As you might expect, he doesn't have much of an idea of what goes on in my life. He knows that I have ferrets, and write for a publication he refers to as Mongoose Monthly. But he has no idea how many ferrets, what their names are, how they are kept in my home, etc. Well, we were having this conversation about how no, my husband and I were *not* making a 1600 mile round trip by car in order to attend my younger brother's high school commencement. (This is the son of my father's second marriage.) I care for my brother, but that's a lot of miles to travel in a weekend. This was a friendly conversation, but like many family conversations involving second families, it had the potential to turn ugly, fast, so we were being careful. Then, from my father's perspective, right in the middle of a sentence, for absolutely no reason at all I start yelling "PING! Stop that! PING!, stop that! Oh, hey, wait a minute I'm back...just hold on a sec...lemme get this drawer...PING! For God's sake PING!!! STOP THAT!!...I'm sorry....he's in the damn drawer again, he wants the pens...gimme another minute...*hit....*hit....PING!" Now, my poor father has no idea that I have a ferret named Ping. None at all. All he knows is that his daughter has started speaking, yelling, and cursing in tounges. Next I'm about to start praying with rattlesnakes, probably. He is quiet for a very long time on his end of the phone. A veeeery long time. I try to explain. "I'm sorry, I have this new ferret named PING! PING! PING! STOP IT! and he likes to get, his name is Ping and he gets into the drawers here next to the PING! phone and he messes with everything in PING! STOP IT! them and makes a STOP IT!! mess. Sorry. I'm back." More silence from my father's end of the phone. What is it like to be a parent? I don't know. Obviously, you have expectations for your children, and "PING! YOU LITTLE *HIT!!" is not one of the expectations my father had for his oldest child when I was born in 1965, a helpless pink bundle, all snuggly and cute. Now, I don't talk about it much, not because I'm embarrased, but because it just doesn't come up much, but I am Manic-Depressive. I have upon occassion, ah, had a somewhat distorted view of reality, generally when I try a new type of medication and it disagrees with me. For all my poor father knows, well....he just has to take my word for it that there is a new ferret that he has never heard of before messing with my stuff...or, of course, I could be suffering some sort of psychotic break hundreds of miles away, imagining that I have some sort of ENEMY invading the drawers in my living room.. Ahd he just has to take my word for it. This is definitely *not* what my poor father bargained for in 1965. PING! PING! PING! Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML issue 4858]