Saturday, April 30, 2005



Don't forget: Next Sunday is Mother's Day.

Oh, fine. You can roll your eyes at me while the stinky protesting hippie inside of you says "Mannnnnnn, that is just another stupid Hallmark holiday." But if you don't buy your Mother something, then Dear God, you are one more star on the horizon. So you best join in the fun now while you still have all your internal organs in one place.

I have no idea what to get my mother. The only thing she doesn't have is a helper monkey. But those jokers are expensive, and I don't have time to make my own helper monkey now. Gee. Why do I wait til the last minute when it comes to good ideas? God forbid she ever really needs one. I just thought she'd like to have him around to take shopping, maybe he could vaccuum out the car, stuff like that.

Think, think, think...I need ideas.

It's not as if I can trace my hand on a paper plate with a crayon and have an adult help me glue some elbow macaroni on it and call that "love" anymore, can I? I mean, this is the woman who told me, as I lay dying in my own grief and regret one day, wishing that I had done something, anything exciting with my life, something that might help people, I said, why oh why am I not doing anything culturally beneficial with my life, something that would really make a difference to people? And my mother said "You are doing something good for people. You have a job, so you are not a drain on society."

There you go. When you are 98% correct that you have chosen the exact wrong path for your destiny, always remember: On that bright side of your soul-draining craptastic job is the part where you are, most importantly, not a drain on society. Put it like that, and you too can feel like a princess.

But really, my fondest fever-breaking comment came as yet again, I lay dying in my same old brand of grief and regret, this time over an unfortunate relationship gone bad with a fat illustrator, and I just couldn't see a way past the excrutiating pain, how was I ever going to get over this funny little fat balding bastard, this lying sack of dirty pink angora sweaters with chili-cheese homestyle fries on the side. How could I personally live without this selfish, impish goobernugget? Oh no, I'm not joking either, I was incomprehensibly and personally devastated. I mean, sure, this guy is probably gay, even though of course he is married now and his nut-crushing shrew wife has given birth. Fine. It's all part of the pattern of denial. Trust me, I've seen it more than one hundred times since the whole unfortunate incident, and besides the raw data, you really can't bury a gut feeling even with a pound of freshly fried chicken livers from Popeyes--

ANY-@#$%ING-WAY...

...my mom tried to be as motherly about it as she could on the phone, with the generic, Mom-like comments like "I know, I know" and "Well, you'll get over it in time, you will." But I could tell she really had something much deeper to say, something profound that she wasn't sharing with me, I could just tell, but I had no idea what it was. It was that truest moment in the mini-series of life that occurs about seven times in a person's life. And in retrospect, you hope you hear it again when you die because it's what the meaning of life is made of. Like how you can end sentences with prepositions if you want to.

So after the long pause, her mouth finally overrode her brain, and she said: "Well, hon, I mean honestly, you gotta admit...he's like...two milkshakes away from being Louie Anderson."

And just like that, the fever broke. The clouds parted. This was one of those rare moments when I have absolutely never felt better in my life. And I laughed so hard that I can't think about without laughing. It starts my life over from time to time, like someone took my Etch-a-Sketch and shook it clean. And then, because she is my mother, she Windexed it to a perfect, glossy shine like only a mother can do with: "You know, I'm serious, you really dodged a bullet..." and "Personally, I really think he might be gay..."

So now I just have to get her a helper monkey. Ya know? Might as well start Googling for one now. Snap one off eBay before they find out and unlist it. The FedEx charges alone will kill me, but don't you think she's worth it?

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