The Insanity Ends Here

I know I try hard not to talk about my family. Well, I don't really "try" so much as avoid the fact that they exist all together when I'm here in my closet of shame. Heh heh. But, I think that the following must be said: My mother is insane.

In. Sane.

I don't say this lightly and I don't mean that clinical type. That kind is manageable because everyone knows those people are crazy. Simple solution.

No, no. It's the latent lunacy that only rears its pyschopathic head when they family is around. She's a professional, you know; high-powered, well-respected. The kind that freaks your boyfriends out waaay more than any gun-toting rottweiler of a father could ever hope to achieve. And she wonders why I never brought anyone home.

But, I am prepared to substantiate my claims with an honest-to-God list of things she does, and has done for years, in secret:

• Loud noises ruin her day. If you drop anything around her, she shrieks and jumps, her body wracked with shudders and she has to soothe herself for a minimum of twenty minutes.
• She's obsessed with humorous hats and buys them with wreckless abandon. It's just not right.
  
• Her language is never appropriate to the situation. She can never be “mad,” she’s “appalled.”
• Serving pie makes her feel entitled. If you get a slice from her, it comes with the announcement: “I’m done serving people for today. That’s it.”
• She has no ability to carry just one purse. She wants others to believe that all her shit can be managed with this one tiny purse, but secretly stores a medium purse and a diaper bag in the car so if she absolutely has to, she can move the next size up. And her purse has all this shit hanging off of it…mirrors, cell phone packs. Her purse has purses.
• She acts like all of my brother’s actions are extreme. His friends are “those hoodlums (said ‘hoodle-ums’)” and if he brings home a six-pack, he’s a “binge drinker.”
• She schedules our vacations so intensely that people who join us have to be vigilantly watched for signs of dehydration. She passes out water constantly reminding us in harsh tones that she doesn’t want anybody “getting weird” at the Liberace museum, or the Denver Mint, or whatever we’re being dragged to.
• She sneaks into my room while I’m visiting and pets my face while I’m trying to sleep. It sounds sweet, but really…try sleeping through someone tracing your nose and dragging your hair across your mouth. Insanity.
• She cleans our stairs and kitchen floors on her hands and knees with a handi-wipe, a pan of hot dishwater, and a butter knife.
• Movie theatres. OMG. She wears earplugs because the music is too loud. She keeps six coats and pairs of extra-thick socks in her minivan and layers them on (with multiple hoods draw-stringed to tightness so that only her nose peeps out) like an Eskimo before we can go in. Literally, we have to get there fifteen minutes early to accommodate this…she even stole my socks off my feet during Sea Biscuit. She claims she “needs” her glasses at the movie theatre, but doesn’t notice if they’re missing a lens, and will not believe me until I poke a finger through the frame. She won’t buy two drinks and insists on indicating whose straw is whose by height—a height that disappears after three sips—and then she is “appalled” if I use her straw by mistake and takes the lid off for the rest of the movie.
• She gets hurt doing even the simplest of tasks. For example, she pulled her neck muscle so badly that she couldn’t drive for a week…get this…turning off the alarm clock.
• She has these stretches she has to do to sort out this glute injury she sustained over thirty years ago doing football stretches with her students. They’re these deep bends, lunges, and lying-on-the-floor-with-one-leg-in-the-air things…not so bad, except that she insists on doing them in anonymous, but very public places like the airport, the mall, and the parking lot of any truckstop.
• She only eats stale Peeps.
• She needs written step-by-step instructions taped next to everything in her house, from her DVD player to her wardrobe.
• She has a heightened sense of smell. She knows if you burnt toast in the house three days before while she was on vacation (and yet more “obvious” smells, she’s oblivious to…me thinks she needs a point of reference…grin).
• For years she believed that electrical boxes on the side of the freeway were a refrigerator and washing machine and couldn’t understand why no one wanted them.
• Everything she owns is at least thirty years old and comes with a story. “I won that turkey pan in 1973 when we were moving to Ireland for your father’s residency….” The worst part? She expects to be passing these things onto me. Thanks, Mom, but I don’t want your turquoise rocking armchairs.
  
• She can’t cook, so her meals at home consist of something over spaghetti noodles…and not necessarily conventional things like tomato sauce or pesto…chili, tuna, and peas are personal favorites. She fears the grocery store. Fears. I've never seen someone who hoards Campbells' Cream of Mushroom Soup like she does.
  

Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion, but when your mother has to be handled like a prize poodle, all skittish and neurotic-like, there just something ain't right. Grimace.

But, you have to love her, right?

I mean, it's like a legal obligation or something...is your mother like this?