From Russia with love

My mom is a pretty with-it person, but she’s leery of this blog thing. As a technological no-hoper, she can't really appreciate what I'm trying to do here. Remember the"Melissa" virus? It was the first e-mail worm ever to be sent through cyberspace and it wasn't David Smith who created it. That was a very smart computer saving itself from my mother. So you see - computers can't take over the world, they're too busy running scared from my mom.

Over the years, I’ve definitely put her through her paces. Growing up, my best friends were usually the boys who lived near my house. So it wasn't about tea parties and Barbie Dolls for me, no. Rather it was me getting stuck with the Skeletor doll, while their dads assigned me as defensive tackle so we could have a proper game going. Even though football wasn't really my thing. So I'd show up for dinner, having been pummelled to death and dirt all over my face, and all I'd get was: “Do I have a girl or a boy? Girls don’t play football, and roll around in the grass, so I must have two boys!”

Hey, could it have been the boy haircut and overalls she made me wear?

Nah.

Later on, in college, I got into the club scene. Going out every night in platform combat boots, fire red hair, and a metal hoop through my lower lip, she near had a stroke trying to be objective. My name stopped being M and became “you look like the bride of Frankenstein”.

Circa 1996:

'Me: Mom, where are the car keys?

Mom: I don’t know. Use your lip ring as a lightning rod to start the engine, then you won't need them.

a

Me: You're not helping.

a

Mom: You look like the bride of Frankenstein.'

a

***

With this blog thing, she's becoming a little unsure as it's progressing and realizes people are actually reading what her daughter has to say. It's not just some wacky phase I'm going through anymore. Bwahahahahaha!

a

And she’s fiercely private about her…well, privacy. So when I mentioned a few of the things I’d discussed here, she had to say something. As far as she was concerned, I was out to expose the deep dark secrets of the family, even going as far as to say what really happened to my brother's turtle in 1981. The reaction was a complete meltdown of my beautiful, independent, fiercely opinionated mother, who's lived in the United States for 30+ years. She morphed into a Babushka from the Old Country.

"Vy vould you do zis to your mutter?"

a

No matter how much I try to explain that I respect everyone's privacy, it doesn't matter. All of a sudden, my family is La Cosa Nostra and I will be hung by thumbs and fed olives one by one, until I promise never to write about them again. Or worse - they show my freshman year school photo to everyone I know.

a

But I have to take that risk. There are so many people who can benefit from my mother's vast wealth of knowledge ("she's so had collagen and I'll tell you how I know") and her Russian proverbs. Sayings like "A fly will not go into a closed mouth" and "He would say "Ah" when looking at himself". Actually, that last one I have no idea what it means.

a

In any case, as much as she wonders if I'm the result of some sort of genetic mutation, I know she fully supports whatever I do and loves me. However, if you don't hear from me after this post, don't sit there wondering about it - call out the dogs!