For some reason, my mother cannot for the life of her remember that I am allergic to NutraSweet.
She claims to remember things so well. Can (and will) offer quotes of things I allegedly said some 30-odd years ago. Tells the same stories in the same way all the time.
But yesterday, we were in Costco (a topic for another thread), and she was buying Crystal Light iced tea. She asked me if I’ve ever tried it. “No,” I replid. “I’m allergic to NutraSweet.”
Cue the puzzled expression, the furrowed brow. “Really?” she asks. Clearly this is brand-new information to her. No flicker of recognition, no, “Oh, yes, I knew that.” She has clearly never heard this fact about me before in her life.
Except she has! She heard it just a couple of months ago, when I was at her house and she offered me the damn Crystal Light. In fact, she hears it every three-to-six months, when I am at her house and she is offering me…you guessed it. Crystal Light.
I’m going to start calling her Sam-I-Am, I think.
Is there anything about you that people can’t (or won’t) remember?
My dad forgets my food preferences - no chicken with skin or on the bone, and I like my eggs cooked, dammit, not liquidy. (I don’t care what Alton Brown says, an omelet should be done in the middle - cheese melted, egg cooked. I’ll make a grudging exception for over-easy, since it seems hard to cook the white and leave the yolk uncooked. I suck.)
Aside from getting my name misspelled on a regular basis by people who know better, lots of people can’t seem to remember that I don’t drink booze. I have no problem with alcohol or with people who drink it, but I simply DO NOT LIKE IT. It has nothing to do with being drunk, getting sick, being an alcoholic, or any other reasons people ask me about. I simply do not drink booze. No, not even champagne on New Year’s Eve. No, not even one beer. No, I don’t want to try your wine. Or your Kahlua and Cream, even if it does taste like a milkshake. Thanks for offering but I DON’T DRINK BOOZE.
My mother for a few years had the notion that I wore size 10 pants. Anytime she gave me pants, for birthday or Christmas, they were size 10. I didn’t wear a 10. I’ve never worn a 10. I’m scrawny and would have to gain about 30 pounds to wear a 10. None of my sisters wore size 10 at the time either. I don’t know where she got that particular number hammered into her head.
She finally did catch on after I showed her a couple times how I could slide them off my hips without unbuttoning them first. I guess that was memorable enough.
My mother can’t fucking remember my date of birth. It’s not about presents or having a “birthday”, but the fact that she can’t remember her own daughter’s DOB. I freaking came OUT OF HER for God’s sake.
Kind of the opposite here, I keep forgetting that a certain friend grew up in BC. One time I suggested that we should introduce her to the wonders of Pocky.
My mom couldn’t seem to grasp that I’m tall. I’m 6’ tall, and have been since I was 14. I’m as tall as my father. Still, she was puzzled anytime I’d return a present because the shirt sleeves were too short, or long-legged pants looked like capris.
A couple of years ago she suggested that I get a London Fog trench coat like hers. Her coat was very nice, but I explained I wasn’t going to get one because were going to be too short. “Try mine on! It’ll look nice!” she said.
I did. The sleeves ended about three inches above my wrist bones, and the belt loops were around the bottom of my rib cage.
I’m a non-onion eater in a family of onion enthusiasts. The parents are retired and I’ve inherited mom and dad hosting duty when they come back for all the various holidays and birthdays and such.
Mom: Honey, I need you to run and pick up onions, I want to make fried potatoes for breakfast tomorrow.
Dad: You don’t have onions in the house? They last forever, how can you be out of onions?
Me: I don’t eat onions.
Dad: Sure, but you cook with them.
Me: Nope, why would I cook with them, I don’t eat them.
Dad: But you can’t cook without them! How can you not use onions?
Me: Easily, I don’t enjoy them, don’t use them, don’t cook with them, so why would I have them?
My mom has apparently never taken a good look at me.
For years, she’d buy me really tiny clothes that made me look like a hooker…we’re talking tiny little T-shirts that wouldn’t fit over my boobs. I don’t think she realized I had grown any.
Finally, as tactfully as possible, I mentioned that I’m not ten anymore and I can’t fit into most of the clothes she sends me.
So now I get massive oversized could-be-used-as-a-tent-or-a-port-in-a-storm clothing that I wouldn’t even wear to bed because I’d be afraid it would smother me alive.
I’ve also told her that I really don’t like quilts, patterned fabrics, or anything remotely resembling “country decor.”
I still get boatloads of it from her every year. YOU KNOW I HATE IT, MOM. QUIT SENDING IT TO ME!
And the thing is, I don’t even bust it out when she visits. You won’t find it anywhere, because that’s how awful it is. Wouldn’t you think she’d notice?
My mom has been trying to dress me my entire life.
If I let her, I would have looked like Shirley Temple until I was 30 and after that, a retiree from Arizona.
I’ve pooh poohed everything she gives me.
Fortunately, my husband poo pooh’s them too.
He once asked why my brothers dress like old men. Y’know, the 70 year old men in sansabelts and patterned sweaters of Doom. I pointed to my mother, the queen of Polyester and said, " Blame her."
My father forgets my name. This has been happening for as long as I have had at least one sibling.
The other kids’ names he remembers; just not when he’s trying to talk to me. This inevitably leads to me giving him sideways glances, him sputtering for a bit, and then finally blurting out “Whoever the hell are you are…”
For 28 years, my grandmother couldn’t remember that I don’t like seafood. When we’d go visit we’d usually arrive on a Friday, which was fish night for her and Grandpa (Italian Catholics who had a meal for every day of the week, and never got with the “meat on Fridays is ok now” thing). Every single time, she’d offer me whatever fish they were having, and then would be surprised when I declined and asked for pizza instead (which I would share with my brother … somehow, she always remembered that he doesn’t like fish). She also could never remember that I had a tattoo on my ankle (“Jenny! What’s on your leg? Is that a bruise?!”), but to be fair I’d only had it for 5 years when she died.
(Darnit, now I miss my grandma. :()
My mother can’t remember what nights I have school. I send an e-mail to the immediate family every semester, telling them my schedule, and I think I mention my classes every single time I talk to her. But still, it can be the end of the semester and she’ll ask me to do something on a night when I’m in class. But at least when I say, “I have class that night,” she has the grace to say, “That’s right, I knew that!”
The only one (and this is pretty mild) is that my mom doesn’t remember that I like being called “Matt.”
Well, fair enough – she’s the one that named me Matthew. And it doesn’t really annoy me, so my policy is now more in the nature of “only my family call me Matthew.” Something of the reverse of the usual nickname policy, I know.
She also could never remember that I had a tattoo on my ankle (“Jenny! What’s on your leg? Is that a bruise?!”), but to be fair I’d only had it for 5 years when she died.