Mother’s Day is coming. Yes, that’s your early warning. Please reserve your table for brunch at a South Valley restaurant and get your act together for the gift.
Oh, wait. You forgot the gift? Seriously? It’s Mother’s Day. We mothers have spent years making dinner, washing clothes and changing diapers. Trust me, I speak for all mothers when I say we deserve brunch and a nice gift if only because we spent the first three years of your lives touching your poo. If that’s not maternal sacrifice, then I don’t know what is.
But just because I’m nice, here’s a little Mother’s Day gift for you—a short list of the Great Lies Moms Tell.
1. You were potty trained early. Really? No. No child is potty trained at 6 months old. I don’t care if you were some sort of child poo prodigy. You were not trained at 6 months old. Or 8 months old. Or a year. Heck, if your mom was lucky, you were out of diapers before you reached the stage where she had to move you from Huggies to Depends.
2. From the day you were born, you showed a special talent. Here’s the thing: I have a child and I think he’s awesome. But really, when babies are young, they don’t show much in the special talent areas unless they are especially skilled at such things as crying all night or projectile vomiting. Well, unless it’s my son. He actually was the best baby ever. And super talented. Mostly at projectile vomiting, but still. Super. Talented.
3. When fish go to heaven, they travel via toilet because it’s the fastest way. OK, really, your fish is dead and we are flushing him down the toilet because the alternative is to bury him in the backyard where the neighbor’s cat is sure to dig him up by morning. And honestly? The trauma from finding Snowball sitting in the garden with fish guts hanging from his whiskers is much more difficult to explain to your future therapist.
4. If you make a face, it can freeze like that and you will spend your entire life with your eyes crossed and your tongue hanging out. Look, I’m not a doctor. I don’t even pretend to be a doctor, although I have been known to wield a pretty fierce Band-aid. But even I know that the only thing that will freeze your face is Botox. Just look at any woman in Hollywood. Or Sylvester Stallone.
5. Tell the truth and you won’t be punished. I don’t want to shock you or anything, but if your mother says this, it means one thing—and one thing only. You are in the biggest trouble of your life, and you bet your bippy the minute you confess you will be punished. But you should still tell the truth. If only because my son occasionally reads this column, and I still need to have this lie available for use.
6. If you shave your hair, it will grow back thicker. Um, no. If this were true, 11 billion balding guys would drop everything and shave their heads 50 times a day until they were graced with thick, full hair. So stop hoping shaving that “mustache” that appeared on your lip at 12 will do anything. It will not get fuller until you are in your 20s. Or never.
7. All we want for Mother’s Day is something handmade by you. Actually, this is true. But at a certain stage of our lives, we’d rather have a bloody Mary. And a card. A handmade card, of course.
Now, go make that reservation. And let me know if there’s a place in South Valley with a good bloody Mary, OK? Because that’s where I want to have brunch.
