My mother turns 60-years-old today. As you know she’s pretty gifted with the selling of The Avon which means she herself is a walking representation of Avon and if she’s any indication THEY SO MEAN IT when the bottle says “takes years right off your face.” I can pretty much guarantee that any visible wrinkles on that woman’s face are a direct result of stress I myself have put her through. Like that moment we left her house on Friday night, and my step-father said, “You’re leaving before she gets to open her presents.” And I turned to the whole room full of family and said as I stepped out the door, “I really don’t care what she gets as long as it includes a good bonking.”
Saturday night we attended another party for my mother, this one at my aunt Lola’s double-wide trailer where there were seven gigantic casserole bowls full of food fried in bacon grease. Lola keeps a vat of bacon grease on her countertop that she uses over and over again to do her cooking. I know you won’t believe this, but, yes, you can cook bread in bacon grease. And ice cream. And cake. She even uses bacon grease to cook her bacon. I don’t think Jon believed me when I told him about the bacon grease, but Saturday night HE WITNESSED THE BACON GREASE, a sizzling pond of pig fat bubbling on her stovetop. I can assure you it’s much less glamorous than it sounds.
Family gatherings are always SO. MUCH. FUN. So I decided to play around a bit with my sister’s twin four-year-old boys who are scared to death of Aunt Heather and her unwillingness to bow to their every command. Joshua, the kinder, gentler of the two (which is like saying, “Of the two violent, sociopaths convicted of manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon, Joshua is the one you’d prefer to marry your daughter.”), he carries around an off-white bunny rabbit whom he calls Puppy. It was perhaps white at one time before the other twin, Noah, tried to flush it down the toilet or threw it from a moving vehicle.
I grabbed Puppy and told Joshua that I’d give it back to him if he’d let me tell him a secret. I also grabbed Noah’s ball cap and made the same deal with him. Thing is, you don’t deal with the twins. They beat you up until you give in, those are the usual rules. But they fear me because I am associated with Jon who, I don’t know if you knew this or not, takes shit from no one (except me, because I’m cute when I do it), and the boys know Jon is a brick wall that cannot be conquered. So I stole Puppy and a ball cap and challenged them to a battle of wills. This annoyed all the adults in the room more than it did the twins because they had to endure Joshua’s incessant troll-like, guttural yearning for PUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPY.
He’d stick his bottom jaw out in front of his top jaw, fall on the floor, writhe, pant, kick, and then this noise would come out of him similar to the sound of Puppy but sounding more like an exorcising of a diseased llama. Several times my mother told me to give him back his Puppy but I wasn’t going to give in to a four-year-old. I have standards. Where was my mother when my brother had me strapped to the floor while letting his spit drip into my face? WHERE WERE YOU THEN, MOTHER? Me holding onto Puppy for a few minutes longer was NOTHING in comparison to the psychological damage an older brother who is an Eagle Scout can inflict. Think: rope tying, fire, sacrifice.
So my mother decided that she’s get in on the mind games (I didn’t get this habit from just anybody), and she started telling the twins secrets to tell me. This went on for well over an hour, the twins never telling me the secret my mother whispered into their ears, the twins never getting close enough so that I could tell them my secret. Finally, after the 17th or 18th llama exorcism my sister gave in and forced Joshua to walk over to me so that I could tell him my secret. She had to hold him forcibly near me, and I leaned down and whispered, “Phs hs hshshhshshsh phshshshshsh.”
He looked up at me like, “Wha?” So I whispered it again, “Phs hs hshshhshshsh phshshshshsh.” Right about that time my three-year-old cousin was standing in my mother’s grip getting an earful of a secret to tell me. Just as I handed over Puppy my three-year-old cousin walked up to me and said, “The secret is that The Church is true!” And then my mother cackled in victory.
Oh, I see. That’s how she’s going to play it.
So I leaned down and told my three-year-old cousin a new secret, “My mommy is a poo poo head.” And then I ordered him to go and tell her my secret, but he refused. I grabbed hold of both my twin nephews and told them the same secret, “Grandmommie is a poo poo head.” And they both looked at me and shook their heads without saying a word. THE WRATH OF GOD AND GRANDMOMMIE WAS NIGH.
This does not prove anything about the validity of the Mormon Church or its doctrines, only that the boys in my family are pussies and that I obviously haven’t matured past the age of 12.
Happy Birthday, Mom. You’re not really a poo poo head.