TITLE:   Giggles
AUTHOR:  Flyin Monkey (Scully_Dana_K@yahoo.com)
RATING:  G
SUMMARY: Scully learns to play baseball 
SPOILERS:  I've got so many for "The Unnatural" (US Season 6),
you really should see the episode first.  Otherwise, I'll have
ruined all the best scenes, and then how will I sleep at night?

DISCLAIMER: I temporarily "borrowed" these characters and
a good chunk of the dialogue from FOX Broadcasting, CC, and
1013 productions.  I promise to return them no worse for the
wear when I'm done.  Please don't sue me.  I have no money.

------------------------------

I don't really ever laugh.  I giggle.  I giggle like a
five-year-old girl.  Worse, I can't stop.  Once I get going,
I'm gone.  My brothers used to tease me mercilessly, pinning
me to the floor and tickling me until I thought I'd throw up.
Whenever Mom saw it, she made them stop.

My mother isn't around to rescue me right now.  Oh, how I wish
she was.  Mulder seems to have a sudden fascination for my
giggle.  He dragged me to the office on a Saturday to "look
for anomalies" in 50-year-old New Mexico newspapers.  I made
the mistake of teasing him with my ice cream substitute...

"Did you bring enough ice cream to share with the rest of
the class?"

"It's not ice cream.  It's a nonfat tofutti rice dreamsicle."

"Ugh!  I bet the air in my mouth tastes better than that.
You sure know how to live it up, Scully."

With that kind of taunt, how could I resist?  I decided to
see how much torture he could take...

"Oh, you're Mr. Live-It-Up, Mulder.  You're really Mr.
Squeeze-Every-Last-Drop-Out-Of-This-Sweet-Life, aren't you?
On this precious Saturday, you've got us grabbing life by the
testes.  Stealing reference books from the FBI library to go
through New Mexico newspaper obituaries for the years 1940 to
1949.  And for what joyful purpose?"

Looking for anomalies.  Mulder and his "Flying Disk" reports.
I couldn't help but smile.  He even had the audacity to ask me
if I knew the number of sightings reported in the 1940s.

"I don't care.  Mulder, this is a needle in a haystack.  These
poor souls have been dead for 50 years.  Let them rest in peace.
Let sleeping dogs lie."

"Well, I'm not going to sit idly by as you hurl cliches at me.
Preparation is the father of inspiration."

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die."

"I scream, you scream, we all scream for nonfat tofutti rice
dreamsicle."

That's how my wonderfully tasty ice cream substitute ended up
all over the Bureau's ancient collection of New Mexico
newspapers.  And also how I discovered that, while I had been
lugging volumes more massive than myself from the FBI library
to our basement office, Mulder had been reading antiquated
baseball box scores.  He even tried to explain it as the
"Pythagorean Theorem for jocks."  I almost collapsed into a
fit of giggles right there.  Then he noticed something about
one of the pictures, one Arthur Dales was shown with
a baseball player.  He then proceeded to "sneeze" and
"accidentally" rip the page right out of the book.  As soon as
he was out the door, I gave in to the urge to laugh.

That evening, I get a message marked "urgent" on my answering
service from one Fox Mantle, telling me to come down to the
park for a very special, very early or very late birthday
present.  I get there and, not surprisingly, find Mulder
swinging a baseball bat and wearing an old jersey.  He apparently
had a good day, and has now decided to teach me to appreciate
baseball.

"Now, what you may find is that you concentrate on hitting
that little ball...and the rest of the world just fades away.
All your everyday nagging concerns.  The ticking of your
biological clock.  How you probably couldn't afford that nice
new suede coat on a G-woman's salary.  How you threw away a
promising career in medicine to hunt aliens with a crackpot,
albeit brilliant partner.  Getting to the heart of a global
conspiracy.  Your obscenely overdue triple-X bill.  Oh, I'm
sorry, Scully.  Those last two problems were mine."

That just about did me in, which was probably his intent.
Now the real question: when do I tell Mulder that I already
know how to play baseball?

I was on the family team for years.

~End~

Feedback appreciated at Scully_Dana_K@yahoo.com