8 MAY 05: MOM-OGRAM
LAUGHLINE FLASHBACK - 31 DEC 01: Perhaps the strangest personal story of the year surfaced a few weeks ago. Someone started a rumor at the TV station that we live with our MOTHER! A co-worker decided one night to get to the bottom of this -- only indirectly:
"Have you ever brought your mom here to the station?"
"No. I'm not sure what good it would do."
"Well, other people bring THEIR parents to the newsroom. I'd like to meet your Mom. Does she share your sense of humor?"
"Well, not anymore, she doesn't...."
"Not anymore?!?! Why not?"
"She died in 1983."
Fast-forward now to this past week, at a Columbus gift shop. I've won a $25 gift certificate to this store, with no choice over my prize. The manager sees my envelope, and says I have to use it in the floral department. I feel as awkward as Elton John must have felt, before he came "out."
I was a winner in a Mother's Day promotion - only my mother and grandmother are dead, I have no sisters, and I've never been married. Oh, I almost forgot: I don't have any children, either. These days, even single guys have to specify that....
In short, I have a hard time at this point in my life relating to Mother's Day. Yes, I know mothers matter and are very important. As Bob Barker used to say on The Price is Right, "If your mother didn't have children, chances are you won't either."
Ask me for the biggest memories of my mother, and I can name you many times when I upset her:
+ I moved from a duplex in her name to an apartment, and only realized later I'd left a closet full of nice suits behind. Mom called to chew me out for it, then asked if I had anything to say. "No, because you'd mock anything I'd say" - whereupon she mocked those exact words.
+ I'd bring Mom a Dairy Queen sundae one Sunday afternoon, and she'd be thrilled. I'd do it again a couple of months later on a Sunday, and she'd be annoyed. Perhaps she checked the weight scale between those events?!
+ Mother would ask me to turn on the garden hose so she could wash the car - then slowly boil over when I didn't anticipate her being finished, and turn the hose off without her asking.
I didn't want this entry to be completely negative -- but it took a good long run Saturday night for me to come up with positive memories of my mother. She WAS the one who thought I had physical problems as a boy, when my Dad thought they were emotional and mental. I won't go into details, beyond this clue: "Depends."
It was my mom who served a variety of items for dinner each night, from hamburger steak to pork sausage patties. When she was ill, Dad could do little better than toasted B-L-T sandwiches.
Mom would leave little notes in my school lunch box, sometimes with fun riddles. Nowadays, she might try to call me on a cell phone - and I'd wind up suspended from Muscogee County Schools....
Which reminds me: isn't that a strange situation at Spencer High School? Kevin Francois's mom called him from Iraq during his lunch hour - and when faculty members tried to stop the call, Francois reportedly swore at them and was suspended. Perhaps the next "Salute to Soldiers" parade should march by the Superintendent's office.
(BLOGGER'S NOTE: Watch for a new Big Blog Question on the Kevin Francois suspension, to be posted during the day Sunday.)
But I'm digressing - given my background when it comes to Mom in particular and women in general, what should I have done with the gift certificate? I wound up buying a bouquet of flowers which fit inside a dainty teacup. Maybe that sounds small - but the box for keeping up took up a lot of refrigerator space for four days.
I took the flower-filled teacup with a matching saucer to church Saturday, and placed it atop the upright piano we use for hymns. We have a collection of silk flowers, which are arranged around the lectern -- which is funny, because our Pastor has a thing against using "flowery language."
When the service was over, I gave the real flowers and their arrangement away to a family whose mother couldn't make it to church. She had really bad headaches, I was told. Maybe it's only a coincidence, but my mother developed ulcers over the years - uh oh....
OVERHEARD OVER HERE: We're going to assume it was a mother we heard talking to some women about her family, outside a Columbus grocery store.
"So I said to J.R.: 'J.R.! What's that in your mouth?'
"'My teeth.'"
With best wishes to all mothers, let's check other items from the weekend:
+ Columbus Police reported someone robbed Continental Cleaners on Milgen Road - using a wooden spoon! [True/WXTX] I guess some people really are desperate to make a Mother's Day cake....
+ A fire broke out during the Friday lunch hour inside the old Eagle and Phenix Mill downtown. The mill's being converted into loft space - and I suppose this would be one way to save on painting the walls black.
+ AFLAC marked its 50th anniversary with a big bash at the Columbus Civic Center - featuring Chairman Dan Amos dressing like Elvis Presley and singing! If they come out with a new commercial to the music of "Disco Duck...."
+ Park Hill Cemetery began a new series of TV commercials, telling how they treat people with respect. It is just coincidence that the commercials are NOT running on the TV stations which showed attempts to bury caskets in pools of water?
+ Students graduated from the Muscogee County school "Bridge" program at the Columbus Public Library. Amazingly, each person receiving a G.E.D. was applauded -- so these families must be the REAL troublemakers in town.
+ The National Association for the Mentally Ill staged a fund-raising walk at Kinnett Stadium, complete with an attempt to set a record for wearing Groucho Marx glasses. You might be able to spot the patients with mental illness - who could be wearing those glasses for the next several days.
+ Instant Message to the evening staff at Krystal on Victory Drive: Be very thankful I had another blogging topic planned Saturday night. I mean - almost 20 minutes to prepare THREE burgers, with few people in line?! If this is "fast food," you made the NASCAR drivers on TV look like they're traveling 300 miles per hour.
(And while we're at it, to all Krystal stores in general - please put the price of your "B.A. Burger with cheese" on your menu board. Let's let everybody know you're charging 43 cents for one slice of cheese.)
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