Regarding that really creepy email I received today at 3:38pm…
I want you to know this is not something I’ve made up. I know I’m a comedian, and a creative, right-brained kind of guy, but even this is a bit too “out there” for me to come up with.
I just received an email from (I assume) a young girl’s mother who, for her little girl’s upcoming birthday, would like to have me video myself being tickled, because I remind the daughter of her father who passed away last year and apparently loved to be tickled.
They put a lot of details into the request, they obviously know who I am (from my comedy at least), so I know this isn’t spam. In fact, from the subject line I know they have emailed me directly from my website’s contact page. Still, it’s hard to accept at face value simply because it’s just so… well… bizarre. It almost sounds like a fetish at first glance.
I debated including the actual text of the email here, but I’d hate to embarrass anyone who’s been through such a loss and could be honestly asking for something in all sincerity that I, personally, just find too nutty to accept as real, so I’ve changed the names and the ages – just to be a gentleman.
hi Darren,
my daughter,kathy(7), is going to be 8 on saturday,oct. 6th and she has a request of you. we discussed her request and this is what we came up with…
because you remind her so much of daddy (we lost him to testicular cancer the week before xmas 2011),she would like to watch someone tickle you in a vid like she used to tickle daddy. it was her favorite game, make daddy laugh. he was a “plus size” redhead too and a good dad. funny too.
what we thought, if you would, is maybe you can let someone secretly tickle your sides or bare feet through half your podcast on sunday and record it on vid for her, or maybe do a “news segment” vid on youtube in which someone tickles your sides or bare feet while you try to keep your composure and pretend it’s not happening to you. of course she would like to see you being tickled while you try to pretend nothing is happening. she got the idea from a movie actually.
we thought this would just be harmless and clean family fun. would you mind doing this for my kathy? i know it’s a huge imposition. not everyone finds it as fun as chris did. lol
if you do it, would you let us know where we can see/hear it?
thanks so much, Darren.
cristty and kathy
p.s. i love your drunken xmas tree bit 😉
Why does this not feel like “harmless and clean family fun” to me?
So I get curious, and I email back and forth with this woman a few times, trying to cull some info to make a better judgement. All she tells me is that she listens to my podcast and saw my photo once (and her daughter did as well, which supposedly started this) and they were surprised how much I looked like the little girl’s father.
I look at the email address (yahoo – which makes me even more hesitant), and it looks like someone’s actual name. So I do a Facebook search for the name to see if perhaps I know this person. I don’t. Turns out she lives in a state I’ve never been to, and she doesn’t look familiar at all. No matter, people find me occasionally online so we’re not out of the realm of possibility (nice to know my podcast is reaching so far out). But this woman has only one profile pic, no pics of family, no references to anything of substance on her wall – in fact, it appears she never posts but maybe once or twice a month, and that’s mostly automated posts from games she’s playing.
Even if this email were true, it’s a little too far “out there” for me. I’ve asked a few friends, and they’ve ALL come back with “that’s creepy”, “she’s sick”, “it’s a hoax” and similar conclusions – along with some pretty snarky comments asking me to record tickle videos for all of them now, of course. (With friends like these…)
This woman came back numerous times asking “just five minutes of your family tickling your feet” and then “just ten minutes of someone tickling you while you do your podcast”.
I thought I had ended the conversation when I emailed her for the last time saying, “My wife has looked all of this over and has said ‘no”. Sorry to disappoint. Hope your little girl has a great birthday.” Quick, painless, straight to the point with no room for debate, right?
Here’s her response…
“well she almost would have. diappointing children seems to be popular these days. i thought being a family man and a good christian that something as sweet and harmless as a little tickling for a child’s birthday would be the easiest request. guess ur too much of a star to be bothered. i won’t bother you any more. i’m sorry.”
Wow. It appears someone has been living in the world of entitlement. Really? I’m already so “much of a star” that I’m crapping on the little people? You honestly believe that? Lady, I hope you tell your daughter about this little email exchange of ours, and tell her that I denied her request, because she needs to learn about disappointment and how to deal with it in a responsible and adult way – obviously she ain’t going to be learning that from you.
Besides, I’m not ticklish.