Right about now, Archie Bunker’s Brooklyn accent is resonating all the way to the Pearly Gates. “Awwww, Geez, Edith…who in the hell let him in here?”
(RIP, Sherman Hemsley)
Outside the Baby Bubble
To friend my mother or decline? That is the question.
On the right side of my screen I see “Susan. She has 29 facebook friends. Suggest friends for her.” Suddenly I’m back in junior high school, except there’s a horrifying new twist: my mom is clutching her tray in the cafeteria, searching for a place to sit.
Poof! Facebook spings a halo and perches on my right shoulder. “Invite her over to your table,” it whispers in my ear. “There’s plenty of room.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I protest. “I already accepted her friend request. What more do you want from me?”
“Make her feel welcome. Introduce her to people. It’s hard to be the new kid.” If Facebook had a face, I’m sure it would have a most disapproving look.
I dig my heels into the floor and stare at my feet. “Why should I listen to you? You’re not even supposed to be here. It’s 1987.”
“…After all she’s done for you,” Facebook drones on. “She raised you to be better than this.”
I ponder this for a moment. It’s all true. There was never a moment in my life when my mom wasn’t there for me. She always taught me the difference between right and wrong, and when I showed my less-than-saintly side, she taught me to be disappointed in myself without punishment.
However, publically announcing her less-than-popular status is also the perfect opportunity to get back at her for dressing me and my sister in twin hand-croqueted ponchos until we were in the second and fourth grades, respectively, chimes in an altogether different voice from my other shoulder.
The devil wins again.
Security
… the feeling I get when I flick on my windshield wipers, and the minivan rocks back and forth.
Snapshot from the ’70s
Tyler was rummaging through my bookshelf and stumbled upon this—a favorite from my collection of stories I read to my middle school kids during our unit on personal narratives. It made me fast-forward to when I’m a grandma, force-feeding my grandchildren my many tales of growing up in the ’70s. The memory that ages me most is where I’m sitting on my dad’s recliner with a cable box propped on my lap, channel surfing by pressing each button from left to right, in active pursuit of a new episode of The Brady Bunch or Gilligan’sIsland. Nearby is our weekly copy of the TV Guide, with a picture of President Jimmy Carter on the cover. It gets me all choked up to think of how far we’ve come. Either that, or I just swallowed a tooth.