Moms

Advice like "Make sure you have clean underwear on, so, if you’re in an accident you won’t shame your family." I’d like to ride with an ambulance crew sometime to see if they really check. I’ve never seen an ambulance crew show up at an accident and start checking underwear hoping to catch someone and shame their family have you? Whenever I’m in another town, I check the local newspaper hoping to find a list of those caught with dirty underwear, but so far no luck. My mother made such an impact with that statement to me that for awhile when I was young, I was so afraid of getting caught with dirty underwear, that I used to carry a spare pair, in case I knew an accident was eminent. I guess I figured I could always change before the ambulance got there.

I know a lot of Mothers have said that, but what kind of advice is that? Chances are if you’re in an accident and you have clean underwear to start with, you won’t have at the end, right?

Mothers all seem to say the same intelligent thing, like, "O. K., if you kill yourself, don’t come running to me for help." My Mom was no different. My Mom’s favorite saying was " Go ahead, shame your mother like that, because when a child shames their parents like that and that parent dies, their hand sticks out of the ground, for all the world to see." That was the fear tactic she used to keep me somewhat in line. I say somewhat, because I could always argue with her toe to toe since I was about three. Every time I did something she didn’t like, it was the same thing. She would raise her hand in the air shaking it and grasping her throat. In her best quivering voice she would say " Go ahead, the world will know how my children where when I’m dead."

I’ll bet she kept us kids in check with that statement until the time I was about fifteen. It was after one of those quivering moments with her had raised and that familiar statement " Go ahead . . . " that I said " I’m not worried Mom I figured it out, were going to bury you face down, then when your hand starts to rise, it will go straight down and no one will ever know."

She thought about that for a moment, and then she started to cry. That’s the way she was, she cried at the drop of a hat. She cried when she was sad, she cried when she was happy, she sometimes cried just because she felt like it. A good comparison would be with the character "Edith Bunker " of "All In The Family Fame." Can you picture Mom?

As I grew older I really enjoyed her wit, because it was so innocent. It was a gift she gave to me that I cherish.

Thinking back every now and then my Mom was full of strange advice. For instance she would say, " If you eat your pickles you will have curly hair." Or "If you swallow a watermelon seed, a watermelon will grow in your stomach," I wonder if Moms realize how much pressure they put their children under? You know if you tell a child not to do something, that’s the first thing they will do. I know I ate a thousand watermelon seeds hoping to grow a watermelon in my stomach. I thought how cool it would be to have your own watermelon factory. Of course I never gave any thought to how I was going to get that watermelon out.

My brother had a habit of eating any money he got his hands on. Of course Mom came up with one of her wise old sayings about that. "If you eat money, a money tree will grow inside of you." Boy did that work on my brother. He gobbled up every coin he could find. In fact it got to be a game with my friends who would save their coins and every Saturday we would get together and feed my brother, who gladly ate every one. Of course when Mom found out I got a taste of her non-verbal communication. She had to; well you get the idea.