My Mom 101: Intro and tough times growing up

Most of you may have had embarrassing mothers growing up, but I assure you mine takes the cake.  So I've decided to put together a little blog highlighting her madness.  I hope that whoever is out there reading this will find it pretty damn funny, but parents be advised your discretion is warranted. 


It is not easy to understand my mom, so I've stopped trying to make any sense out of anything she does. 


I never remember being terribly close to my mother growing up, I always preferred my father.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love my mother and she has done a great deal for me.  For instance, whenever I was running late for school, she would always make me breakfast to go.  I feel like most mothers would send their children off with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but my mother wasn't most mothers.  She sent me packing with a peanut butter and butter sandwich.  In some cultures, this may be a delicious treat, maybe even considered superior decadence, but have YOU really ever eaten a peanut butter and butter sandwich?  So I started out the morning in utter embarrassment by being screamed at by the school bus driver for eating this delicatessen on the bus.  This very incident contributed to further years of embarrassment as I am certain it contributed to my childhood obesity. 


For lunch, it didn't get much better.  While other children's mothers had meticulously packed their lunches and etched at little heart in the Skippy peanut butter as they were spreading it onto the white bread, and cut all the crust off, everyday mine was a surprise.  I want to say it was like a box of chocolates, because you never knew what you were going to get, but a box of chocolates sounds a million times more enticing.  I was fortunate enough to have some kind of trendy Barbie or My Little Ponies lunch pail, but it was all a colorful facade to distract from the real colorful contents. When I say it was a surprise I mean it was a surprise more like cafeteria mystery meat.


I usually sat alone at a table far away from everyone else so no one would see what my mother had packed.  All the popular children would have things worthy of trading with everyone else.  I imagined if I was in prison, it would be similar to all the criminals trading their goodies for clean tube socks, superman underwear and cigarettes (because I knew all bad guys in jail smoked cigarettes).  Through this they could all form some sort of camaraderie and form cliques as to who had who's back.  But I knew I would have to become somebody's bitch for protection if I dare show my weakness, namely, my inedible lunch.  So I just glared at the other students from my isolated corner as if to say, "Don't mess with me," and sometimes pretended to foam from the mouth. 
My mother never could cook so usually my lunches were something like this: Green beans stuffed with horseradish, tortilla sandwich with turkey pepperoni slices. mayonnaise, pickles and powdered parmesan cheese, burnt snicker doodles and a frappuccino. She was so thoughtful to always include all of the major four food groups.  (Looking back at my lunches that I rarely ever ate, I ponder as to how I became so obese.)  The days I did look forward to the "surprises" in my lunch were the days my father packed them: Grilled ham and cheese sandwich, carrots and celery and Oreo cookies and a quarter to buy some milk.


I always was afraid I was the stinky kid in school too.  I don't know if I actually was, but my mother had a policy of one bath per week.  She believed it was the way to build immunity toward things.  Long after I graduated and moved out of the house I went to visit her for the holidays.  She wanted to go out bargain hunting at various second hand stores.  I'm assuming she wanted to add to her collection of stationary bicycles, treadmills and VHS copies of "Meet Me in St. Louis."  I told her I had to go wash my hair before I left the house.  She asked me, "Well didn't you just take a shower last night?"  To which I responded, "Well, yes, of course, but I didn't wash my hair." 
"Well, I don't know how you could ever become immune to anything if you are constantly washing everything."  To which I replied, "Well, I don't know how you could ever become immune to MRSA, hepatitis, Meningococcal, tuberculosis, whooping cough, SARS, botulism, head lice, bubonic plague or chlamydia." Not that any of those listed would be phased by a shower at my mother's house because she didn't believe in soap.
It's a miracle that somehow I survived my childhood without contracting head lice, especially since I had really long hair.  It would be a shame if I had to shave off all that beautiful, Rapunzel-like hair....