Momma Said There’d Be Days Like This…. I’m Assuming

My mother always said, “If you can’t say something nice about a person, then shut your stupid fucking mouth, you dumb piece of shit”. Of course, I’m paraphrasing. My mother has been gone over 30 years now, so naturally I can’t remember anything she ever told me. To tell the truth, I don’t even know if she ever really existed at all, or if I’m just another one of those “miracle babies” that the scientist doctor guys make in the lab. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was. I’m pretty fantastic. But sometimes I need helpful advice, like any test tube baby boy does, to navigate the streets of this harsh and uncaring world. In times like these, I like to make up my own advice but then trick myself into misremembering it as advice coming from my mother.

I know, it doesn’t sound crazy at all, right? So any ways, here’s one of the nuggets of knowledge that I think my mother would have bestowed upon me had she not so selfishly died of cancer when I was 11.

Some people live by the code of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I vividly misremember this one hot summer day when I was 5 or 6 years old. My mother had just made iced tea for me and all of my very cool friends. There were so many of them that sometimes it was hard for everyone that wanted to hang out with me to get the chance. Eventually a lottery system was implemented in order to give everybody a fair shot. I was an extremely popular 5 or 6-year-old.  It’s really not that surprising seeing as how there was a good solid month and a half that I refused to answer to any name but Fonzie. And we all know Fonzie is the epitome of cool. It says so in the bible. Yeah, the holy one.

“And a teeny-tiny Jew shall appear shrouded in leather and blue jeans. And he shall leadeth the flock, and he shall layeth the babes, and he shall jumpeth the shark. Aaaaayyyyymen” – A Letter From Pinky To The Tuscadero’s

During the gathering I asked my mother if I could use the brand new transistor radio that she won at bingo out to the pool. This thing was state of the art. It had AM. It had FM. It had a wrist strap. Very fancy, indeed. My mother looked at me with all the love that a mother can give to a son. The son she bore from her own womb, and said, “Billy, my sweet little beautiful boy, with eyes so blue I could only compare them to the water in God’s swimming pool, or maybe to a bottle of Windex. Oh, my sweet eldest son, who I would give anything in the world to for just one glimpse of your precious smile. Are you fucking nuts? You can’t possibly fix the thing if you break it, what with your fat little sausage fingers, so don’t fucking touch it”.

If there’s one thing about Mom that I misremember the most, it’s something.