- You break it, you buy it....unless you are a hobo. Then it seems like you can break all kinds of shit and no one will do a damn thing, because urine soaked hobos are so damn lovable.
- If you can't feed them, don't breed them....unless you are an uneducated single mother on food stamps and without a job. Then by all means WE will feed your damn ugly poor kids so keep pumping those rats out.
- If it aint broke, don't fix it...unless you got a new set of $5000 22 inch chrome rims. Then by all means bolt those fuckers on your twenty year old Cutlass that you bought off of Craigslist for $100. Those rims will make any POS car look hot AND it's a good investment.
Today is mother's day. It has been fun looking on Facebook and seeing everyone's mother's day posts. The faded Polaroids showing young vibrant women holding their young children in a loving embrace. The black and white high school graduation photos of their mothers, taken when their mothers had their whole lives in front of them. Taken when their dreams were as bright as the noon day sun. Taken before they became pregnant. Taken before the unfulfilled dreams of youth were washed away and replaced with 6th grade parent teacher nights and waste cans lovingly placed next to the beds of children who ate too much Halloween candy.
Most everyone I know believes that their mother should be made a saint for what they had to put up with. The wrecked cars, the poopy pants at Denny's, the vomit on her favorite blouse, the $200 long distance phone bill for a girl you thought liked you and you would call every day, the eating of her reddest lipstick and then ruining the wallpaper by kissing it all down the hallway, the sealed letters from the homeroom teacher waiting for her on the kitchen counter when she came home from work informing her that her child has a problem with biting other students and she will need to come in to discuss it and finally all those times when she would have to make up the fold out bed in the basement again because her adult child spent the rent money on a various ill planned adventures.
A mother's love is fascinating and seemingly endless.
That is why it is best to learn very early in life that most rules have exceptions.
I learned that a mother's love has limits during the summer of 1972. I was four.
In my eyes, my parents were golden gods who worked very hard and could do no wrong. I didnt know it back then, but we were not a monetarily a wealthy family. But, my two older brothers and myself never were allowed to go without anything. It seemed that we had it all. Sure, I had iron-on knee patches on my hand me down Tough-Skins, But when you are a kid, those patches are goddamn badge of honor and look really cool. I didn't realize it then, but both my parents busted ass to make I and my brother's journey through childhood as effortless as possible.
Effortless and educational go best when they walk hand in hand.
My dad worked in the grocery business and received a lot of cool stuff from food brokers. We recieved toy race cars from Coca-Cola, a COX gas powered airplane from Sprite, and inflatable rafts from Coppertone. All this stuff was really cool but it was a portable cassette recorder from the guys at 7-up that I remember best.
Back in 1972, portable cassette recorders were big, had fake wood grain trim and generously trimmed in chromed plastic. The recorder was as big as a briefcase and had this massive black dial on the top next to the tray the cassette was placed into that made a loud 'click' when you turned it from stop, record and play. It also came with a single 60 minute Maxell cassette tape and a swanky handheld microphone.
This thing was tits for my eight year old brothers.
At first my brother's only were recording songs off the radio, favorite television shows, the neighbor kids were enlisted to scream silly songs into the mic, the cat was enticed to meow and the flushing of toilets was explored extensively. But soon, more creative outlets begged to be unearthed.
I have never been comfortable listening to a recording of my own voice. I have always thought that I sounded like some kind of Kansas City homo with a bad head cold and a stuffed up nose. As an adult, I have come to terms with my feelings about this. I mean, what can I do? It's not like I can cry about how I sound on someone's voicemail.
But, I could cry about it when I was four.
I don't remember what started me crying on that warm summer afternoon. I do remember my brother saying to me, "Why don't you cry loud enough for mom to hear?".
At the time, his advice seemed like a good bet. Through my tears I could imagine my mother hearing my painful wailing and running into the livingroom to rescue me from my brother's dastardly plan to disembowel her youngest child.
A mother's love...
My crying escalated. Maybe mom was next door having coffee at Rosie's house? Maybe it was time to take it from an eight to a ten?
Then I heard it. The sounds of my own nasally wails wafting throughout the house. I stopped long enough to hear a loud click and cassette tape being rewound. Then my recorded cries of distress again began to echo loudly.
"STOP IT", I cried.
"NO", my brothers laughed.
I began to cry again. This time the tears were real and not just a call for the safe loving embrace of my mother. I ran from the living room and into my bedroom and slammed the door. From outside my room, I could hear my own sobbing being replayed, rewound and replayed over and over again. My brothers never stopped laughing and I began to cry louder and harder.
Every new recorded broadcast was met with my own sobbing demands that they "STOP". After what seemed like an eternity, I finally resorted to burying my head into my pillow to muffle my crying but they had that damn swanky microphone that seemed to pick up everything.
At this point, my entire face was a glistening mixture of snot and tears. Thats when the sound of the screen door slamming caught my ears. Mom was home. Now my laughing torturous brothers would be punished and my wounded bleeding soul would be healed by a mother's love for her youngest child.
I cried loud enough for mother to hear.
The cassette recorder heard me first.
Through my recorded crying screams mixed with the wild laughter of my brothers, I could hear my mother ask "What is going on in here?".
"Listen to Topher", my brother Tim chimed as he clicked play on the cassette player.
"STOP IT", I protested.
The cassette player did it's job, my brother's broke into wild laughter and my mom began to giggle.
In her own way, she thought the recording was funny. The recorded sound of her youngest child crying in pain amused her.
What little composure I had quickly melted and I became a sweaty sobbing blob with my head buried into a thoroughly moistened pillow. Every recorded cried of despair was met with a trio of hearty laughs from both my brothers and my mom.
"If you stop crying we will stop recording you", my mom added after every replay. That afternoon I also learned what 'circular logic' is.
But more importantly, that afternoon in 1972, I learned that a mother's love has limits. Scraped knees, bee stings and ear infections all fit into a mother's list of things that deserve her loving attention. A mother will go to the ends of the Earth to make her child with a swollen bee sting feel better.
But if you are gonna cram your head in a pillow and cry like some kind of fucking pussy, you got another thing coming. I learned that my brothers probably would have stopped recording me had I punched them in their fucking heads. Sure, it may have turned into a bruised face and a nose bleed for me when they hit me back, but at least I wouldn't have been recorded and laughed at like some kind of retard. Besides, a black eye and a nose bleed would have got me a fair share of the mother's love thing.
So if you want your mom to love you, don't be an idiot. No one loves an idiot.
No comments:
Post a Comment