Sometimes I wish my mother would worry a bit more. I was right in the middle of the largest riot in European history and managed to escape about three hours into the riot, after various escapades. When I finally got home, I did the decent thing and called my mother - who knew I had been there - to let her know I was OK. “That’s nice dear,” she replied.
Mom was first convinced that I was goign to burn in hell’s atheists circle (anybody know what’s the décor for that one?) when I stopped praying at age 5. She didn’t quite get over it until I was 17, by which time I’d been praying again for 11 years.
So of course when she saw me with a Thor comic book she almost had a heart attack (I was 15 and in my second year of Confirmation Prep). Let’s not mention her initial reaction to DnD, even though I bought the box post-TV-show, which my brothers and myself had been watching every Saturday for quite a few months without growing any visible bat wings, ram horns or goat legs.
Yesterday she said “I’m going to buy me a bike, that’s what I’ll do!”
Me: Mom, you can’t drive, remember? You didn’t get your license because you couldn’t turn your head.
Mom: I don’t need a license for a Smart. And with one I can go to the pool any time it’s open. (The covered public pool is 30’ away at her walking speed, the one where she goes in the summer is out of town; public transportation reaches only the first but doesn’t run on weekends)
Me: That’s not a Smart. It’s a scooter with a ceiling. For a Smart you DO need a license. And for a scooter with a ceiling you DO need to be able to look over your shoulder.
Mom: I do?
Me: Unless you want to get run over on those 200m where the path to the pool uses the beltway, yes. You need to look at incoming traffic. That means turning your head.
Mom: I won’t use it on days when I can’t turn my head then.
Me: That will work.
Mind you, since she doesn’t have the money for a scooter with a ceiling and I’m not going to loan it to her, good luck extracting it from my brothers 
My mom (and one of my sisters) tend to get worked up about everything. I’m used to it now so it doesn’t bother me.
Their current favorite mom/sister obsession is directed at my other sister, although it’s my fault they know about it.
My oldest sister has had a wart on her little toe for going on 10 years now. She got it while she was in the hospital, giving birth to her son. She’s had it surgically removed once and it came back worse than ever. Well, now she just wants to have the toe amputated. The wart is almost the size of her little toe and she’s worried about it spreading to other toes. She wont miss the toe. As she pointed out, having the wart removed will also remove a very large part of the toe anyway.
Well, I told my mom about it. She asked how my sister was doing and that was the only thing of note that I had to tell.
So, now they’re freaking out about it. I don’t know why they care so much about that stupid toe but they’re calling her and e-mailing her with toe amputation horror stories and herbal remedies.
The only thing my mom obsesses about concerning ME, which still manages to irritate me, has to do with my non-SAVED status. She’s all worked up about the fact that RAPTURE is coming soon and I’ll be LEFT BEHIND.
She’s so concerned that Rapture will happen and I’ll be stuck here with criminals and sadists. I told her that if it ever does happen, I will, in fact, be stuck down here with almost every member of my family, all my friends, all my coworkers, and a good portion of the rest of the world. She, on the other hand, will be up in heaven - with Fred Phelps.
I did however, PROMISE to start believing in god, IF Rapture ever happened. She got a little pissed at me for that one.
And the first thing a professional fire-eater (or fire-breather) will tell you is that you never under any circumstances do anything so completely unbelievably stupid as using gasoline (ok, so we call it petrol, but the end result will be the same).
We were vacationing with my folks in Virginia, and while visiting downtown Lexington, I decided to run across the street to get a cup of coffee at a cute-looking cafe.
My father told me to look both ways before I crossed the street. I was in my late 30s at the time.
I guess it doesn’t matter how old you get…you’re always going to be your mom or dad’s baby.
The funny thing is, years ago, remember when there was that tunnel train wreck in Baltimore? And there was gas in the sewers and manhole covers were exploding into the air downtown and such?
Yeah, I was there, with some friends, for an anime convention. We actually saw flying manhole covers. Also, Baltimore was such a shithole that when it rained, one of my friends broke out in hives. They were letting the fire hydrants run into the drains to do something about whatever was going on beneath our feet. It was all very post-apocalyptic. So I came home and told my mom about our brushes with round manhole death, and she said, “Uh-huh… uh-huh… uh-huh… well, I’m glad you girls had a nice time.”
But get one scooter…
I’m 25. Anytime I drive my mother anywhere, and she knows I have to turn in the next eight miles, she’ll say “get into the right/left lane, you have to turn in 2 miles”.
I recently saw a video of a guy on a scooter getting cut in half by the wheels of a delivery truck.
Drive safe.
My mom is a locked door freak. Whenever she comes over she jiggles the handle first to make sure the door is locked. Because I can always hear her arrive I often will open the door for her before she even makes it to the breezeway. It drives her batty.
“You just open the door for anyone? What if I was a burglar?”
“Mom, I looked out the window and saw your truck. I saw YOU get out of the truck. I saw YOU walk up the sidewalk”
“…Well, there COULD have been a burglar hiding in the breezeway”
“Yes, Mom”
Now, I can be home, have every darned window open, but I must have the deadbolt AND the handle locks locked.
Mothers. Oy.
I’M NOT A FIRE-EATER! I DON’T DRINK GASOLINE!
Seriously, what’s with people today? I didn’t mean the fire-eating thing seriously. I just wanted to ilustrate that, no matter what I’m actually doing, my mother will sometimes, for no particular reason, react as if I was telling her that I planned on drinking gasoline and playing with fire.
I’m thirty-two years old and if I don’t call my mother every Sunday (and she does mean every Sunday - including Sundays when I’ve spoken with her the Saturday immediately before Sunday), she gets all paranoid and assumes that I’ve been horribly killed and then calls me up on Monday all in a tizzy “Why didn’t you call me yesterday?”. The response “Because I spent an hour on the phone with you the day before yesterday?” fails to satisfy.
Of course, this is the same woman who called me yesterday to inform me that if my husband and I are having trouble conceiving, lentil soup is the answer to our fertility woes.
Evidently this is because it has lots of folate.
No, I have no idea where she came up with any of the three ideas a) my husband and I are having fertility issues b) we desire a cure for fertility issues or c) lentil soup was a Magic Pregnancy Providing Substance.
My mom is really overly paranoid about a lot of things. She worries that I am going to develop rickets or something because of an insufficient diet. Despite the fact that I called her from the grocery store to ask what kind of beans I should put in the chili I was making that week and told her about the oranges I got that were 6 for $1. She still worries that I am eating nothing but chips, soda and candy. She also sends me those email hoaxes that get forwarded to her from her friends. I just keep sending her back the link to snopes but it doesn’t stop her.
pbbth, my mom does the same. She’ll bring over fruits and veggies stating she knows I don’t buy them. Every time she does this I open the fridge to show her the bounty of fruits and veggies that are always in there, but that does not stop her.
She also frequently comments on how clean my house is - like it’s a miracle. Granted, when I lived at home I was a slob, but I think I’ve come a long way in the 14 years I’ve been on my own.
My mom suffered/suffers from panic attacks ( back when we use to call them
" She’s having a spasm about X…" ) and so my entire life until 30 was living with a very paranoid-worrywart mom.
She’s been in therapy for 11 years and when she takes her meds, its a wonderful thing. When she doesn’t, its a flashback to my youth.
What I’ve learned is when she amps herself up on some dumbass subject that has nothing to do with her, I change the subject.
This is my theory:
Alot of things like worrying comes from behavior learned from their own parental units and boredom. They think it is normal to spaz out over every little thing because their MOM did it.
Also, now that the kids are on their own and there is this freespace in their brains suddenly for the first time, instead of branching out and trying something NEW
(which is too frightening for most.) they chose to worry or helicopter parent over their spawn. this is when the nagging about a grandchild starts.
They are bored and have nothing to occupy their sudden free time. If the do have something to occupy themselves they feel guilty about actually doing something for themselves after all these years of doing something for someone else.
I swear to god that when my kids are out of the house for good, I"m taking up sky diving and smoking dope. I don’t want my kids to ever lament to their friends what a worrying nag mother’s become.
Heh, she talked to my grandma about it, who said, “Hon, you bring them up and then they go. Don’t worry about it.” Which is weird, because Grandma worries about everything.
I’ve tried hard not to be a nagging, worrying mother to my kids. Well, I do a second-generation nag sometimes when MY mom nags me about something about one of the kids till I ask them to please call/email her and get her off my back, but that’s more self-preservation than first-generation nagging. But I try very hard not to worry, at least audibly. I’ll let my daughter correct me here if she thinks I’m not doing a very good job, since it’s her fault I became a Doper in the first place.
But yes, new interests do help. and acquiring large, dumb, happy dogs who substitute as toddlers is also effective; they require lots of time and attention, which keeps me from feeling all lonely and abandoned <sniffle> when I’m home by myself working every day.
The best maternal worrying I’ve ever run across is Amy’s Answering Machine. Her mother has for years left her these hilarious messages, a delightful mix of guilt-slinging, worry, and martyrdom. The website has samples; I actually bought the CD some years back, and have it kicking around here somewhere.
I can’t believe we gone this far and no one, no one, has asked the most important question.!
You do wear the clean underwear when you ride right? Just sayin…
Trust me, if I did get in a good smashy wreck, they wouldn’t be clean anymore.
I do this too. Seriously why my mother thinks I can make my adult children do something is beyond me. They are adults, have free will and make their own choices.
Substitute cats, and I have to ask–are you me??
All it takes is one moron in a car of ANY size talking on his cell phone and not paying attention and all your mom’s hard work, from your conception forward, ends up as a bloody stain on the asphalt. Just think of the extra gas money as insurance and get yourself a nice size car.