Getting Goats

I love playfully teasing my girlfriend in hopes of getting a reaction. It’s like the grade school antics of little boys who desperately want little girls to notice them. Negative attention (“Stop it, Billy!”) is better than no attention (“Billy who?”).

When faced with my teasing or silly jokes, my girlfriend rolls her eyes, shakes her head, clicks her tongue, or a combination of them all. While vacationing in San Diego a few years back, I put together a string of teases and puns that resulted in a run of more than ten eye rolls in a row. I have a series of eye roll photographs to prove it. It was a beautiful moment in the history of jokesters. My dad would’ve been proud.

 “Getting someone’s goat” means to irritate, annoy, or get under their skin. Supposedly, the saying is tied to horse-racing lore: nervous racehorses were sometimes kept with goats because the goats supposedly calmed them. If a rival stole (got) the goat before a race, the horse might become agitated and perform poorly.

Every time I get a reaction from my girlfriend about my jokes or teasing, I’ll smugly announce, “I got another goat.”

 She will invariably respond, “I’m all out of goats.”

 “Then how do I keep getting them?”

 I shared that story, so I could share this one.

 Recently, my girlfriend asked how my day was at the office. I explained the projects I was currently working on, with whom I was working on those plans, etc. I was feeling good about myself and prattling on, never stopping once to ask how her day had been.

 When I finally stopped talking, my girlfriend said, “Somebody’s thinking he’s pretty cool.”

 I puffed with pride. “I don’t think it,” I said jokingly, “I know it. Everybody at the office thinks I’m the coolest.”

 “Yeah?” my girlfriend asked with a sly smile forming. “What do they see that I don’t?”

 She stared at me innocently until I laughed, then she cracked up. It was a beautiful tease, and she managed to steal one of her goats back.