Rain Man Moments

If you’re 20ish, you probably spend your Friday nights lamenting over whether or not you should have a couple of shots before you hit the bars. Because nothing says, “I am one martini away from needing a liver transplant and a cab” like showing up drunk to a bar just so you can get more drunk. You have to envy the young in that way – when your paycheck and your organs are equally expendable.

Not that I’m old by any means, but my Friday nights are usually spent perusing the grocery store aisles or laying on the couch playing GodFinger on my iphone. I promise I’m not bitter, but the contrast is stark to say the least.

Ang and I, being the proactive planners that we are, have devised a system of grocery shopping that expedites our time spent wandering the store. She takes dry goods and I handle produce – we meet back somewhere between pickles and diapers where we combine our findings into one cart. On our most recent trip – she had just dumped the contents of her cart into mine, when she abruptly blurted out, “I’m going to go get the cat food okay…do you want me to take the cart or do you want it..never mind, I’ll take the cart…be right back.!” Now, not only does she not know what cat food we buy or where the cat food aisle IS, but she had that weird cadence to her speech that I hear when she thinks she’s being sly about something. Sorta like “I’m about to go do something that I don’t want you to know about and I’m cleverly disguising it as being helpful:)”
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Wanted: One Empty Nest

I don’t have kids and I don’t want any. There…I said it.

That doesn’t mean that I’m kid “unfriendly” in a – “take them to a remote location and leave them for dead” kind of way – I would just prefer to view them from behind glass or some other safe enclosure. My mom used to tell me that she didn’t particularly like children. You would think that would suck a little since in fact, she had two – but in actuality it wasn’t that bad. My sister and I ended up with a mom who didn’t have to live vicariously through us – hanging on our every word, and telling her friends how smart we are because at 9 years old we managed to figure out the whole tooth fairy farce on our own. No – my mom is a realist, she believes in telling it like it is. I admire her for that.

When I was a kid the word “everyone” was a forbidden term. I used it frequently to expose her backward, hillbilly way of thinking. When I wanted a phone in my room – “everyone” had one but me. When I wanted to stay up past ten o’clock on a school night – “everyone” else was getting to. Everyone had a pool, everyone had bunk beds, and everyone had a mom who let them spend the night in a cemetery because it’s fun. I never got the penguin I wanted either.

My mother would just stand there calmly letting me ramble on with my evidence of “everyone,” before rolling her eyes and sighing… “Who exactly is everyone Melissa? How is it that you have come to know everyone hmm?? Then she would pull a National Geographic from the bookshelf and flip it open to the middle before shoving it under my nose. “How about these people here?? I suppose you believe that each one of them has a 1500 gallon salt water aquarium with sea otters as well? They don’t even have pants Melissa.”
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The Jig Is Up

So maybe it’s a little ironic that of ALL the people in the Dallas Metroplex to have a crazy lady calling them – I end up the lucky recipient.

The past couple of months for me have been somewhat – “harried.” Then about 3 weeks ago, I had several missed calls on my phone from an unknown number. Curious…I called the number. It was to a mental hospital. I felt an immediate pang of paranoia for a moment, afraid that a concerned loved one might be doing something – “for my own good.” Fortunately most of the people I know, are themselves, one Froot-Loop shy of a bowl.

Anyway, my mystery caller called back and we had a D-E-L-I-G-H-T-F-U-L conversation…
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