The Hilarious Hypnotic Hijinks of Mom and Dad

It all began last Saturday night when I convinced my parents to join me at what I thought would be a hilariously entertaining hypnosis show. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” I’d said. In hindsight, “fun” didn’t even begin to describe the levels of hilarity that were about to unfold.

My parents, ever the adventurous duo, agreed to take part in the show. The hypnotist, a fellow who called himself “The Mystifying Marvin,” scanned the audience for volunteers and, upon seeing the eagerness of my folks, beckoned them to the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Marvin announced, “you’re about to witness the ultimate test of familial bonds: parents acting like each other!”

The idea struck me as uproariously funny. Little did I know, this was just the tip of the comedy iceberg. After a few dramatic hand waves and a sternly whispered “sleep,” my parents fell into a hypnotic stupor.

“From this point on,” Marvin declared, “you will behave as if you are each other.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “And remember, the word to snap you in and out of this trance is ‘watermelon.’”

Fast forward three days and I’m sitting in the kitchen, sipping my morning coffee, when my mom traipses downstairs. Except it wasn’t exactly my mom. She’s wearing my dad’s blazer, which is practically swallowing her whole, an impressively misbuttoned dress shirt, and a pair of slacks defying every principle of proper fit.

“Uh, mornin’, sport!” she says, in an overly gruff voice, scratching her head in a manner distinctly dad-like.

I choke on my coffee, half laughing, half in shock. “Mom?”

“Mom? Who’s mom? I’m your old man,” she replies, pushing out her chest dramatically.

“Okay,” I mutter under my breath, “why do you have to be so ridiculous?” And then it hits me – the trigger word! “Watermelon,” I say tentatively.

In an instant, her demeanor changes. “Why am I dressed like this? Oh no, not again!” she exclaims, before storming upstairs in a fashion icon-turned-husband’s-wardrobe-don’t mix disaster.

At this point, I can’t resist. That word, “watermelon,” holds the key to the most outrageous reality show nobody’s watching but me. So when my dad, still acting like my mom, comes downstairs in mom’s flowery apron and even attempts to cook breakfast with all the finesse you’d expect from someone who considers microwaving as fine cuisine, I nearly spit out my juice.

“I thought I told you not to leave the dishes overnight, sweetie,” Dad-as-Mom nags, wagging a spatula at me.

“Watermelon!” I shout, tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.

Dad snaps out of it, staring at the floral patterned chaos he’s become. “What on earth?”

Every now and then, when boredom strikes – or when I simply need a laugh – I slip in the magic word. “Watermelon,” I’ll say, and suddenly my living room transforms into a sitcom where Mom and Dad try to out-dad and out-mom each other.

“You know,” I confide in my best friend Jill over the phone, “watching them bicker about who left the garage door open while thinking they’re each other is better than any TV show.”

Jill snorts. “I’ve got to see this.”

The next week, I feel a little guilty and decide maybe, just maybe, I should let them fully return to their normal selves. But as I sit in the living room, hearing my mom (as Dad) hollering about the lawn needing mowing while Dad (as Mom) insists on rearranging the furniture, I can’t help but laugh.

The Mystifying Marvin really underestimated the joy of a good family role reversal. And as I sit there chuckling, I realize that sometimes, the hypnotist isn’t the only one who orchestrates the best tricks.

This story was generated by user zach3 with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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