April 2011
1 post
Your mother is so black...
that, due also in part to her very adequate grades in high school, she was awarded a $4,500 academic scholarship from the United Negro College Fund. She accepted the scholarship uneasily, but nevertheless used the money to enroll in an accounting program at a modest state school an hour upstate. She never revealed the exact details of the scholarship to her parents, mainly because your mother...
September 2010
1 post
Your mother is so uptight...
that people routinely jest that she must have had a rod inserted in her ass. What they fail to realize, however, is how close this comes to the truth. Whenever someone mentions the proverbial rod, you fake a laugh and say apologetically, “Come on guys, she’s not that bad.” You do this to draw attention away from your own guilty countenance, your eyes cast downward, since your...
August 2010
3 posts
Your mother is so passive-aggressive...
that she regularly leaves Post-It notes all around the house, which drives you god damn crazy. This morning, for instance, there was one above the kitchen sink (in which you’d left a single mug the night before) that read, “Do we do our dishes after we use them, or don’t we?” This one, coming hot on the heels of a note yesterday afternoon you found on the bathroom mirror...
Your mother is so divorced...
that she and your father no longer live together or file joint tax returns. Their marriage, never the most rock-solid or caring, teetered on the precipice of divorce for the last two years they were together, and was only sustained during that time by a fear of action, inertia, and an unwillingness by the both of them to enter into even the most basic of discussions. As a young child, you would...
Your mother is so French...
that when you were younger she insisted that you call her “maman.” The strange thing is, is that she’s not even really French. Her Francophilia began early on in high school when she became infatuated with Serge Gainsbourg and the French New Wave. She began affecting a slight French accent, which at first people thought of as slightly odd yet charming, but quickly became boring...
July 2010
1 post
Your mother is so poor...
that during a six month period when you and your sister were in middle school and your father had lost his job at the Pepsi bottling plant she would eat a modest lunch alone at the Sizzler. She wore a long coat with many large pockets, and in each pocket she kept a one quart Ziploc bag that she surreptitiously filled with each pass of the buffet line and later served to you at home. She did this...
June 2010
13 posts
Your mother is so lame...
that she obviously doesn’t understand you at all. I mean, it’s not like you’re six years old anymore or anything. Yet she still insists on treating you like a child and not a capable and autonomous human being. Come on, right? It’s so lame how just because of that one time in 7th grade when you happened to mention that robots were rad that she still now to this day always...
Your mother is so tall...
that as a young girl she was frequently teased by other children at school. They’d engage wantonly in every cruel impulse, calling her names and manufacturing any pretense to ostracize her. In the afternoons, she’d walk home alone, eyes cast downward, and disappear into her bedroom to read until your grandmother called her down to supper. But let’s also admit that she was indeed...
Your mother is so gay...
that during the 2008 election, she vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Seeing as Prop 8 received the vast share of its funding from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, this marked the final schism between your mother and her devoutly Mormon family still living back in Utah. Having only returned for occasional visits after graduating Cum Laude from Bryn Mawr, her complete estrangement from her...
Your mother is so greasy...
that her doctor has been treating her for a disorder of the sebaceous glands for over 20 years. Like most teenagers she suffered from acne, but her pimples didn’t clear up as she reached the end of adolescence. Instead, the patchy colonies of acne became more pronounced and, in places, developed into painful chronic sebaceous cysts. This condition was especially bad on her upper back,...
Your mother is so skinny...
that in the early 1980s she often drew comparisons to Karen Carpenter, a well-known singer who died of complications resulting from her anorexia. She wasn’t always frighteningly thin, however, but following her pregnancy with you, your mother became increasingly dissatisfied with her own body. At first she was exercising four times a week, claiming that she needed to shed the...
Your mother is so short...
that she’s not allowed to ride any of the really good rides at Six Flags Great Adventure, where she’s taken you and your best friend Becky each summer for the past three years. Even at 11 years old, you’re both taller than she is and this summer, as you finally grow into the realization that your mother is human and subject to the same disappointments that you are, you wonder for...
Your mother is so fat...
that last year she developed diabetes. Despite ample warnings from her doctor and pleas from you and your little sister, she continued to eat remorselessly and has scarcely left the couch in months. At first, before she became morbidly obese, she would insist that she was simply “big-boned” or had a slow metabolism, but you were there to see her polishing off box after box of Krispy...
Your mother is so easy...
that she regularly makes love with your father. This happens up to three times a week, practically undiminished in frequency if not in vigor, since they were married almost 33 years ago. There was, however, a four month coital hiatus in 1989 when your mother was convinced of your father’s infidelity. As it later turned out, her fears were unfounded although your father does now admit to...
Your mother is so dirty...
that it’s obvious she doesn’t shower regularly. Her hair is severely matted into a single large and ominous dreadlock that hangs down past the knees of her stained sweatpants. She hasn’t had an easy time of it these past few years since losing her job as a customer support specialist for a prominent tech company after they decided it would be better for their bottom line if her...
Your mother is so ugly...
that young children often gasp when they see her. In fact, most people are shocked by her appearance, but she wasn’t always this way. Shortly after you left for college your parents decided to do some traveling, and since your mother was always a bit adventurous their first trip was to be a South African safari. Their first few nights in Johannesburg were like a second honeymoon, and on the...
Your mother is so stupid...
that she had a hard time keeping up with basic math and science concepts in grade school. Whether this was due to growing up in an environment unsupportive of intellectual curiosity or a simple twist of genetic fate remains open for debate. However slow-witted your mother is, she was always very ambitious and enterprising and two short years after (barely) graduating from high school, she scraped...
Your mother is so hairy...
that she was very self-conscious about it all through high school and college and decided, finally, to save money for laser hair removal. After finding a competent dermatologist, she worked long hours at her unfulfilling job in order to afford the treatments, which would take place over the course of two years. After each treatment, initially for excess hair on her upper lip and forearms, she felt...
Your mother is so old
that when she was a young girl, there was no such thing as the internet. All news was disseminated via a radio, around which the whole family gathered in the evenings to listen to the staid and stentorian voice of the news man who would relay world events, which invariably—due to your mother’s advanced age—were concerned with the First World War. And your mother, whom indeed...