Okay. So I totally don’t want to turn this site into a “My Mom Is Crazy” blog, especially since www.mymomiscrazy.com is already taken, but based on the comments on my last post it seems people need to vent on the subject. I’m totally cool with doing that…after all…my awesome baby daughter can’t talk, roll over, or eat solid foods, so it should come as no surprise that the best material I have about her of late is that I helped her move her bowels with a thermometer. (Yes, I will blog about that in the future…poor kid.)
In the meantime though let’s talk crazy parents! I will tell you a couple more vignettes from “The Wacky World Of The Newborn Identity’s Mama” before handing the reigns over to you guys. And I better hear some outlandish stories, especially since many of you commented that you were certain your Mom is crazier than mine!
One quick thing before we get started. The following image isn’t an actual a photo of my Mom, but it makes the stories better if you imagine it is.
Okay…let’s start with another traumatizing birthday party anecdote. (Note to self: Keep Mom away from all birthday parties Maddie is ever invited to.)
One Saturday during the fifth grade my mother told me I could invite my buddy over to play.
“That’s okay,” I replied as I played Sonic the Hedgehog. “He’s at Kevin Chan’s birthday party.”
“Why aren’t you?” she asked, offended.
“I’m not really friends with Kevin,” I replied as Sonic fell off a cliff. My Mom nodded and left the room.
Half an hour later Mom hurried back into the room, breathless. “You won’t believe who just called! Kevin’s Mom!”
I hit pause and eyed my Mom, surprised. “Kevin’s mom? Why?”
“Well, it turns out she forgot to mail your invitation to the party.”
“I was supposed to be invited?”
“Yeah!” my Mom said, all chipper-like. ”So turn that game off and let’s get you over there!”
Upon arriving at Kevin’s house I was taken to the backyard where Kevin and his friends were playing basketball.
“Hey, Kevin! Happy Birthday!” I said as I shook his hand.
“Hey,” Kevin replied, barely audibly, before turning back to his friends and dribbling.
“Can I play too?” I asked. Kevin sighed and share annoyed looks with his friends as his Mom came running over.
“Of course you can play, Mike,” she said.
Kevin’s face turned red. “But that would make it six on five!”
Kevin’s mom stared at Kevin a long time before saying, “Kevin. You know what we talked about.”
Anyway, the party went on like this…every game featured unevenly matched teams, the cake had to be cut into smaller pieces to accomodate me, and the gift bags had to be taken apart and reassembled with less candy in each in order to make one more. Slowly but surely I started to realize something was wrong.
Toward the end of the party kids were taking turns riding Kevin’s new bicycle. When it was my turn Kevin reluctantly let me take a ride. Unfortunately, after about fifty feet or so I wiped out and slammed into the ground. As I sat up, bleeding from my arm, Kevin ran over and lifted his new bike. It was scratched.
“I hate you, Mike!” screamed Kevin, going ballistic.
“You hate me?” I asked with tears welling in my eyes as I clutched my bleeding arm.
Kevin glared at me with dead eyes. “What are you even doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t invite you! Your stupid Mom called and yelled at mine for leaving you out, so my Mom made me invite you, but I don’t want you here!”
Kevin turned and wheeled his bike toward the house. The rest of his friends sent me disgusted looks before following Kevin. I got up and went to wait outside. There was an hour or so of the party left, but I wasn’t about to go back inside, so I just waited on the curb, bleeding, until my Mom finally picked me up. Good times.
On to story #2!
A few years later my Mom was petrified that I was going to get a girl knocked up in high school. (Never mind that I hadn’t even kissed a girl yet and was a junior in high school…Wait. Did I just admit that?)
Anyhoo…there was this Italian girl we will call Jenna (good fake name, huh, BHJ?) who I was smitten with, and, after weeks of nervous deliberation, I finally asked her out. She said yes and I was stoked. My Mom, on the other hand, was not.
“You better not have sex with this girl!” Mom yelled at me after I told her I had a date. “You don’t want to ruin your life like (insert the name of five or six of my cousins who impregnated girls as teens).” I promised her I was different and that she had nothing to worry about.
The day of the big date I waved goodbye to my parents and drove over to pick up Jenna. She looked great when she exited her house, and, as we drove to see “Reality Bites,” we had a really good conversation.
“Yes!” I thought as I pulled into parking lot of the movie theater. “This awesome chick is totally into me! She’s going to be my first kiss, I just know it! Maybe even my first girlfriend! Man life is good!”
I hopped out of the car and ran around to the other side to open Jenna’s door. As Jenna got out, however, my heart sank. Everything turned to slow motion like in a movie right before someone gets shot. Charging across the parking lot was none other than my Mom clutching a jacket.
“Hi, honey!” Mom said as she stopped in front of me and Jenna. “You forgot your jacket!”
“Thanks,” I mumbled as I took the jacket and prayed Jenna didn’t find this weird even though it was nearly summer.
“Wait,” Jenna asked, finding it very weird. “Your Mom came all the way from home just to give you a jacket?”
“Oh, no!” my Mom said. “I was just out and about and saw you kids, and well, I thought I’d give Mike his jacket.”
It was then it dawned on me that a car very similar to my Mom’s had been trailing mine ever since I’d left home.
“I’m Kathy by the way!” my Mom said as she offered her hand. Jenna listlessly shook it as my Mom looked her up and down.
“You two be careful okay?” Mom said. “Don’t get into any trouble like some of these teenagers do today. You know…with drugs, teen pregnancy -”
“Mom!” I shouted.
“Alright, honey,” my Mom cooed as if I was being silly. ”I said my piece. Have fun!” She then started back to her car.
I looked over at Jenna who was less than happy. The rest of the date was very awkward and Jenna barely said a word to me. Needless to say she wasn’t my first kiss or any other.
Okay, folks. Now it’s your turn!
And just to get us started, here is a certainly traumatic comment the kick-ass Maya left on my last post: “I once saved a week’s worth of allowance to buy a toy through the mail. I gave my mom the cash and the envelope and waited for ups. Ups came, but always for my brother. My 8 year old self waited on that porch for that doll for months. My mom said it would come. One day as I was searching for candy in my mom’s purse, I came across the envelope. It was empty and was never sent. How sad is that?”
Pretty sad, Maya!
Alright, everybody. Let’s hear your most horrendous crazy parent stories!
EDITED TO ADD: Feisty Charlie came up with a great idea to let the readers vote for CRAZIEST PARENT (because I’m dying to hear about The Bloggess’ crazy dad)!!! All you have to do to submit your parent is tell a crazy parent story. You can leave it as a comment here, or write it on your own blog with a link back here (and leave a comment below linking to your post. Get your submissions in by midnight on June 28th. I will then make a subsequent post where I list all of the nominees and ask the readers to vote for MOST CRAZY PARENT!!! The child who went through the worst torture will be sent a gift which in no way will make up for a crap childhood, but will be better than nothing!
Danielle says:
Ohhh, Mike. You had it bad.
Does your famous mom read your blog?
Is she this crazy about the famous Madeline?
Backpacking Dad says:
I don’t have any crazy stories about my mom. I could make up some crazy stories about YOUR mom though.
Fiesty Charlie says:
I was about 8 years old, in second grade when mom woke us in the middle of the night and told us to pack a few pieces of clothes and one or two favorite toys. She said we were going on a trip. We were the “white trailer trash” kids in school so the idea of having enough money to go somewhere was kind of exciting.
Anyway, I did as I was told. I remember thinking it was kind of weird that the house smelled like kerosene, as we left. But hey we were going on a trip so I did not care.
Once we were loaded in the car, mom went back in for something “she forgot” and the next thing we know the whole damn trailer is flaming. At the time there were 4 kids sitting in a beat up old car. I was the oldest and the youngest was a couple of months old.
When mom got back, she did so sans eyebrows. They had been singed off. She had to draw them on for months after. To this day, if I smell singed hair, it takes me back to that night.
My mom was an arsonist. Seriously, in total, my family had about 10 trailers burn down between 1975 and 1983. Damn, just realized that is about 1 per year. I think she liked the out pouring of sympathy from the community when we became homeless.
The trailers always belonged to my grandmother, so she collected the insurance money. Back then, I guess it did not occur to the insurance company that “Hey, this family sure had some bad luck with house fires?”
My mother got better, because we suddenly went from straight out arson to “electrical” fires. I remember once when I was 12, seeing my mom blown out the back door from crossing a couple of wires. My friend, she was/is crazy, because she got back up and cussed the wires and went back in to try again, successfully.
I got used to never getting attached to any one place or any one thing.
To quote Heather… My mother is “bat shit crazy…” and this is the tip of the freaking “my mother is actually a crazy criminal” iceberg. Thankfully, I have had serious therapy and think the GLBT gene was flaming enough that it killed the arsonist gene… wait does that make me a murderess?
Oh yeah, what is the top prize for the “Craziest Mother” award? You should give out a prize if anyone’s mom beats your mom!
Heather says:
Hey Mike, can I enter my crazy mother-in-law? Because the first time I met her, she said, “You look just like my cousin Sally. She has no teeth and is an alcoholic in and out of rehab. But she once was very pretty!”
Or the time that she said we shouldn’t get married on the top floor of a building because Al Qaeda would hear about the large gathering and crash a plane into us.
OR when she realized I wasn’t going for the Al Qaeda thing so she tried to tell me that all the guests would get vertigo and fall through the windows.
OR when she told us we couldn’t go to Fiji on our honeymoon because we’d get attacked by Sting Rays.
These are just off the top of my head.
Danes says:
Ummm….anything I WAS going to say was wiped clean by Fiesty Charlie up there. Seriously – WTF?!
And, Mike, thanks for the sweater story. I found some random quote I’d scrawled years ago while we were up for Brianne’s wedding and you were telling a story. I believe it went, “You shoulda got me the ALF doll, B*tch!” Ohhh if only I could remember…..
Mike says:
Danielle: My mom doesn’t read my blog, thankfully, and lives fairly far away so she is more obsessed with my sister’s kids.
Charlie: Wow. That IS crazy. I think you had the drama film of crazy mom and I had the comedy film!
Black Hockey Jesus says:
My mom got pissed at me for knocking over her ashtray so she poured half a fifth of 151 on me & lit me on fire. Wait. Were these supposed to be funny?
Frozen Star says:
The first story I get… I would have been angry if a child of mine had been left out like that: I’m totally going to force my kids to invite everyone when they have birthday parties, or else they’re not going to get a birthday party. Mad momma in the making?
The second story was weird though. I, too, would have dumped the guy preeeetty quickly if his mom had showed up on our first date.
Thanks for making me realize that my own mom isn’t so crazy though. She only cleans too much. And tells me I’m fat.
Fiesty Charlie says:
I think it is funny as hell that my mom singed her eyebrows off…
It was even funnier when she did not get her eyebrows even and had one longer than the other, higher than the other, or perpetually drawn down in an angry looking face….
Now tell me that crime doesn’t pay?
Gin says:
Holy shit! I am visiting my family at the moment in NH and just laughed my ass off. Thank goodness, ‘cuz I needed to lose some weight!
Okay, I’m gonna have to get back to you. My childhood took tens of thousands of dollars in therapy to get me “normal” and seeing things rationally. Thanks to the Love of My Life, he’s my rock.
Any way, I won’t post about my tumultuous youth on my blog – seeing as my parents read it – but I will have to skim through my memory and come back with this one.
Feisty Charlie, I don’t have the words. I don’t feel sympathy is anyway to heal from childhood shit, but chick, you’ve now been added to my reader feed. Your story had me laughing so hard that I scared the animals!
ali says:
my mom is batshit crazy….but my best parent story is a dad one. does that count?
because when i was 4, i went with my dad to pick up his brand new (brown..it was 1982) porsche. i threw up in the car and he was so mad that he got out and left me in the car. and walked home. my mom had to come and pick me up.
Jenny, Bloggess says:
My father collects urine as a hobby. And is a professional taxidermist. He is the type of man that would skin a deer, hide toys inside it and then put the skin back on because that would be like a fun sort of pinata for children. Not long ago he took his pet miniature donkey to a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator and afterward they decided to go to the bar. Of course they took the donkey in because to leave him the car “would be crazy”. When I was in 3rd grade and was in a Thanksgiving play all the other kids were wearing cute plastic indian head-dresses and grocery-sack vests. My father made me wear the entire skin of a buffalo. We had a live bobcat as a house pet. When I was 16 he made me drive to pick up some random guy who’d been bit by a rattlesnake in the woods because he was too busy putting feces on a dead animal. The guy almost died in my car. My dad tried to set me up with himhis friend who soon afterward stabbed his girlfriend and killed himself. I could go on all day.
Black Hockey Jesus says:
Delete my comment, Mike. Your wife slapped me in the face with a white glove.
Christy says:
I would love to enter your contest, but I wouldn’t say that any of my mom’s crazy antics were particularly funny, per se…mostly just alcohol or drug induced rages or embarrassments. I wouldn’t want to depress anybody…but if you’re ever in the market to run a contest for stories that make you want to jump off a cliff, I’m your girl.
Jill says:
Story 1:
My older brothers and I were outside playing in the back yard. Our next door neighbour had a sweet trampoline that we decided it would be agreat idea to jump on to from the roof of our shed. All the boys went and made it, I did not. I fell, and hurt my arm pretty bad. I’m pretty sure my forearm was at like a 90 degree angle… anyways, I ran screaming into the house to tell my mom that I had gotten hurt. My mom was in the middle of cooking dinner, so she told me to eff off and go back outside to play. I went back outside and sat on the porch bawling for about half an hour. Finally she came outside to see what my problem was and when I rolled up my sleeve and showed her my disgusting arm, she nearly passed out.
Story 2:
I always always wanted a dog. Hanging around in our neighborhood with a friend one day, we found a big stray. He was friendly enough so we got him to follow us to my friend’s place where I called my mom. I told her about the awesome dog I had just found, to which she responded “if you bring that dog home, we’re having Chinese food for dinner!” I thought I had won the lottery: a dog AND chinese food?! SWEEEET! That was so not what she meant!
Mary Moon says:
Wow. There are some damn crazy mothers out there and a father or two as well. Obviously.
My mother WAS crazy and you’ll just have to take my word for this but when I was in elementary school, I went to a very small school in a rural area and she was the only third grade teacher. So- for an entire school year, I had my own mother as my teacher. I was already highly unpopular (translation- hated) because I was not only fat but loved to read, which made me a minority of one right there amongst my class mates.
These were the days when corporal punishment was not only tolerated, but condoned and my mother, (whom I had to call Mrs. Smith in school, by the way, instead of oh, Mom) just LOVED her paddle and she used it frequently and with great vigor. Looking back, I realize she was clinically depressed and ragingly unhappy and I suppose hitting the bad kids on the ass really hard made her feel a bit better. Or something.
Anyway, I had to sit there daily, watching my mother who was also my teacher, smack the living crap out of my more unruly classmates in the name of discipline.
You can imagine how much this increased my popularity quotient.
There are other stories, but writing them down would only send me back to the therapist and I just don’t want to go there.