Cooter Booter

I think that being a mother of teenage boys is definitely a thankless job… no extra “combat” pay is included with their birth certificates, nor is there ample warning that teen years are a ginormous pain in the keister.

Now, I don’t MIND driving my kids anywhere… well, within time constraints and reason.  Like, for instance, if my 6 year old wanted me to drive him to hell and back, I could save on gas and just load him up n cookies and soda.  Hellaciousness from the comfort of my own house. 

Or, if #1 son wanted me to drive back-and-forth to where he works THREE times in one day, the 2nd being a total waste of gas, time, and energy.  I drive the 15 minutes down a dark, windy road where deer, like Kamikazis, just spring out across the road like they were being chased by… a bear with gnarly teeth and big, sharp and pointy claws.  Hell, I’D run out into the road in front of cars if it meant that I could get away from a nasty, angry bear.

Anyway… I get down there in time to get him after his shift… text him that I’m in the parking lot… and nothing.  TEN minutes go by and I get a call on my cell from a number that I don’t know.  I thought it was my friend from 20,000 years ago whom I just reconnected with.  So, I answer it… “Mom? I’ve been trying to get you….”  I scratch my head.  I’ve been here all along.  No calls on the cell from him.  No calls at home, because I asked my husband later and he said nothing from #1 son came throuh.  “Uh, why?”  I can hear the commotion in the background… “I have to stay til at least 10.”

I put my head down on the steering wheel and listened, “I can’t leave this kid by himself, we’ve getting SLAMMED with customers.”

I get it.  I’ve worked in the service industry before… but, what I don’t agree with is the crappy hourly he gets…

“Ok,” I sighed silently, “What time do you need me to get you?”

At this point, I’m having flashbacks of when he was 16, in that thankless job that treated him like shit and barely gave him hours until he quit out of sheer frustration.

“10 or 1030, maybe 11 or 1130.”

Shitaki mushrooms… really?  I guess going to bed earlier than I have is out of the question.  (Just another reason to stay up til midnight or later, I guess.)

“Ok, I’ll see you then.  Call me and let me know.”

I make the dark, lonely ride back home, squinting into the shadows, looking for that shiny reflection of deer eyes… as a quick warning that they may… or may not… jump into my path.

Deer in New Jersey are like that.  Most people who live here, in New Jersey, understand the implications of plowing into a rebel deer.  No matter the size, they will crumple your car like a soda can under someone’s foot.  CRUNCH!

I must be getting old, or it was the several hours of sitting at the laptop trying to write some lessons… my eyes were all fuzzy-seeing and sore.  I thought about pulling over on the dark, windy road, where the shoulder is WIDE, and just take a nap… and wait for the kid to call.  But, I figured, that may just scare people… a car, idly quietly, on the side of the road, with no motion from within…. AN AXE MURDERER, I TELL YOU… IT WAS AN AXE MURDERER…

If want to remain mysterious and mostly-anonymous, I have to avoid getting my mug in the newspaper… at any cost.

So, I drove him… all 15 miles of it.

During the ride, I called my mother.  Did I mention that I FINALLY received “the email”?  The email, laden with guilt intended to flush me out and make me feel like shit for not calling her.  It said things like, “If you don’t want us in your lives… tell us and we’ll just disappear from your life” followed by “We THOUGHT the boys had a good time here, but they’re not answering phone calls or texts, so we’re thinking they don’t like us” as well as “You have wounded our spirits and our souls.”

*rolls eyes*

I can’t make this shit up.  It’s like my own personal soap opera, I tell ya.  I hate soap operas.  I think I’ve watched a whole day of soap operas once just to find out what I was missing… well, when Jessica told Pace that she was actually in love with Rebecca AND Shawn, and was pregnant with Dr. Melon’s child… I knew I was WAY out of my league.

I wrote her back, earlier in the day, upon receiving that stupid eff’g email (I tried calling, but she avoided answering her phone because she KNEW I’d be yelling)… and wrote, “First of all, just because I do not speak to you daily does not mean that we have written either of you off… however, you are acting in an immature and ridiculous manner.  Seriously, you are too uber-sensitive and am driving me crazy.  Stop it.”

I called her because I knew if I didn’t, she’d tell everyone she could that I was being hurtful to her.  She’s too far away to drive over to her house and yell at her, so I tried calling around 8:30… almost sure she’d be there.  I really REALLY wanted to give it to her over the phone for her middle school antics.

This is what I get,

“Hello?” (Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet and dripping with sugar)

She had caller ID, she knows exactly who’s calling.  What bothers me the most, with her and her drama, is that her sister does the SAME EXACT THING (but tags a little bit MORE crazy to it) and chastizes her for her melodrama.

My mother, her sister, and my (late) grandmother were three drama queens from the planet, “BOOHOO”!

My OTHER grandmother won several hundred thousand oscars… she was drama queen extraordinare in her own right.

Did I mention, she also added to the response email, “Well, YOU are super sensitive too!” ?  That is HER way of trying to take what I said and throw it back to me… like “I”m rubber and you’re glue” stuff.

Yes, when people are trying to make me feel like shit, you know, like my father during my ENTIRE life… with crap like, “You’re so f’g stupid, that wall’s smarter,” “You a stupid f’g bitch,” and things that would make a prostitute at a truck stop flinch.  I get mad, really mad, and I will yell and then cry.  I think crying is my anger release.  Once I do that, I can sleep for days.

Needless to say, she acted as though NOTHINGGGGGG happened.  Et al drama of the highest proportion.

I remember her saying to me once, “Never air our dirty laundry in public.  What goes on in this house STAYS in this house.”

Oooooooooopsie doodle.  I think I broke her carnal rule… um… my entire life.  And, if she knew I’d been leaking tidbits of it on the Internet, she’d FLIP her wig, her gourd, a cow, and probably break everything I’ve ever given her… that is, whatever wasn’t broken by the movers when her stuff arrived in Arizona.

So what.  I’m not afraid of my parents any more.  I’m not some scared kid hiding in her room anymore.  If only I could stop CRYING when I am so angry and confront them… because I get, “You’re SUCH a cry baby…”

I really don’t like my parents very much.  The problem is that I’m the only living child.  For the past three weeks, I’ve been thinking about my brother… and wondered had he been alive, if she would be leaving me alone.  I think she’d drive him crazy once, he’d call her a bitch, my father would threaten to kill him, and a fistfight would ensue.

Not that THAT hasn’t happened in the past. 

If they could act like respectible adults, I’d consider investing more time into our relationship.  But, after years of emotional abuse and bullying, I really don’t want to be close to them.   (Its only because I have kids that she calls… usually to talk to them, not me.)  I just want to feeeeeel freeeeee from parental obstructions and name-calling.