There's a Reason The Empire Theme Plays When You Call

My mother has finally figured out how to send text messages.  Despite the fact that she still has unlimited text messaging from when I was on her plan, she tries her hardest to economize her messages.  This seems like a natural inclination while texting, but she manages to do so in a way that actually defies one of the tacit rules therein.

Most texts you receive have one topic.  For instance, “Where are we eating tonight? What time do you want me there?  Are we doing anything afterward?” This message asks three questions, but they’re all related to a central topic.

My mother, on the other hand, learned to text on Htrae.  Here is an actual text I’ve received from her:  “Hello son. I hope your week is going well. Grandma is in the hospital again.  Let me know when I can send in your car payment.” Nothing can prepare you for such a text.   It's almost as if she's worried about running up the bill by breaking up her thoughts in an organic way.  Not counting the greeting, there are three separate topics in this message. I’ll break down each one so that you can better understand the punch such a message packs.

Hello son.

My family has a quirk shared with many others in that we refer to one another by our relationship to one another.  It isn’t odd for a child to refer to his/her parents as “Mom” and “Dad,” and most nieces and nephews refer their aunts/uncles as “Aunt/Uncle So-and-So.”  My family, however, takes it a step further. My parents call me “Son.” I call my brother “Brother.” My uncle Jeff is simply “Uncle.” The only relationship where this isn’t the case is the uncle/aunt-to-niece/nephew title.  My aunts and uncles all refer to me as Stephen (or Stevie).

Upon witnessing this for the first time, most people just assume my parents are reacting sarcastically to getting called outside of their given names or something. Or they think my brother and I are just quoting Arrested Development. That one is actually kind of true. I've certainly adopted Buster's affect whenever I greet my brother. Still, just know that names are only important in my family if the relationship alone isn't specific enough to convey information.

I hope your week is going well.

I try to talk to my mom at least once a week.  I rarely initiate the conversation, but if I miss a call, I’ll generally return it unless it’s the fourth or fifth I’ve received that day.  A week is an arbitrary amount of time that I’ve decided is long enough to not feel smothered, and short enough to show affection and respect.  This was my mom’s way of reminding me that I hadn’t called her yet this week.

In my defense, it isn’t always easy to call her. Parents of my generation who live in small tows have a tendency to respond to Empty Nest Syndrome by becoming hometown newscasters.  This can be entertaining on occasion, especially when someone with whom I attended high school ends up in the newspaper for illicit activities. Unfortunately, more often than not, I’ll find out about the deaths of relatives of people I hardly knew.  Today, for instance, I learned of a doctor’s son who died of an overdose. This was only relevant to me because he had another son who committed suicide six years ago. I did not know either son, which means my mom has decided all suicides are relevant to my life due to my oldest brother’s suicide eleven years ago.  Hopefully, you can see why I don’t jump at the chance to call my mother more often to play Six Degrees of Lachrymosity.

This also changed with time.  Eventually, we started bonding over mutual interests like cooking and gardening.  Recently, we met at a BBQ restaurant and had some of the best potato salad I’ve ever eaten.  We agreed on that fact and then spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out what went into it. By the next morning, she had sent me two different links to recipes confirming what we had guessed.  It’s kind of like a game except it normally just makes whoever is eating with us very nervous and quiet.

Grandma is in the hospital again.

My grandma has been having back problems for several years.  Two years ago, she fell and hurt her back and spent several months in the hospital and the nursing home.  She was eventually able to come back, but whenever she feels neglected, she’ll pull out the paperwork and threaten to sign herself in.  She’s the only person I know who on occasion wants to live in a facility that smells so strongly of urine. This message was a request for me to call my grandma and then come home and visit her over the weekend.

Let me know when I can send in your car payment.

At this point, my mom had one of my checkbooks and was sending in the payment for me at the beginning of every month.  I was only subbing during this time, so sometimes the payment would need to wait a few days until the next paycheck. This message, however, was actually how she sealed the deal in terms of me calling her.  It was always easier to just tell her which day to send the payment and explain my reasoning over the phone rather than receive a barrage of questions (and most likely more upsetting information). The woman knows what she’s doing.

Hopefully my mom will learn to break up these meaning-laden texts, but until then, I'm happy to share them with all willing listeners.

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads.

I didn't know what a side console in a car was called until I was in Driver's Ed.  In my world, that beautiful storage unit where people stash their cd's, spare change and sunglasses always had a second function.

A much nicer mobile home than ours

My parents had lake-front property outside of city limits.  Lake-front now applies to the house my father is still in the process of building (he started shortly after I was born).  He still lives in the yellow trailer my childhood friends called "The Twinkie."  The pseudo-house now mostly just blocks the trailer's view of the lake. He claims the reason he won't finish the house now is because his taxes will change drastically.

This prime real estate had its advantages, though.  I developed the skill of hearing a car coming when it was still miles away.  I also learned how to swim and fish at a very young age.  The advantage I never really considered during my childhood, however, was the fact that police were only present if/when someone called them.

I got driving lessons by everyone in my family before my age reached the double digits.  I ramped my ATV off a mound of dirt my dad kept after excavation for the big house, the mound I so lovingly referred to as Muddy Mountain.  A friend's little brother learned how to make bombs online the summer after my senior year in high school; I knew exactly where he could set them off.

Needless to say, traffic safety laws weren't at the forefront of my parents' minds.  I never remember being in a car seat, but to their credit, I've always been monstrously tall for my age.  Whenever I would get fussy and start squirming in the half seat belts that were outlawed from the front of vehicles in the 60's, my parents would bring me to the front of the car.

The Buddy Seat

My ridiculous size as a toddler made sitting on my parents' laps uncomfortable at best.  That's when I would get to sit on "The Buddy Seat."  With TicTacs and pennies jingling and mingling beneath me, I would sit as my father sped down sinuous country roads.  I would even ask to sit there when the front passenger seat was a viable option.  Hitting my head on the roof of a vehicle, after my vision returns, will give me a sense of nostalgia for the days when I was King of the Road with the best seat in the house.

One of my first boyfriends and I made a connection after just such a bump. 

He was a grade below me and I was home for a Halloween party.  It was at the local community college.  My best friend was working there and hosting the party, so we knew it would be a blast.  I went just for her, but then I saw other friends from high school. 

One group of former classmates included Zack.  We had one class together and the only thing I remember about him from that class was that he was tiny and full of frenetic energy.  I thought of him as a chihuahua.  However, Zack was certainly more interesting now because he was wearing a shirt announcing that he was gay.

I was intrigued, but still, not there for him.  His group, though, included some friends I had known since early childhood.  We caught up and when Ashley had to stay back to finish up some details after the party, I left with them.

We were in the back seat of a their Jeep with my friend, Travis, between us.  The driver decided she wanted to "Chase Bambi" which involves driving through harvested fields, literally driving toward the animals most known for killing people with their proclivity for jumping in front of moving vehicles.  The goal wasn't to hit them.  Looking back, it seems like it was a way of getting back at the deer for all of the times they almost killed us.

While in the field, I had one arm gripping the handle above the door and one gripping the seat behind Travis.  As we sped toward what was surely a terrified animal, we hit a huge dip and we were all lifted out of our seats.  Despite the seatbelt I'm pretty sure I was wearing, my head hit the roof.  When we came back down, my hand was in Zach's hand.  It stayed there until we got back to my house.  The relationship lasted a few months and we had some fun, but by the end I was willing to blame the whole thing on the brain damage sustained from that bump.  But perhaps the loving reminder of sitting on the Buddy Seat helped a bit.

Esty, Get Your Gun

My father’s house has always had a gun case in it.  I was never allowed to touch it, but it was prominently displayed in the master bedroom. The Freudian implications of this decorating choice are not lost on me.

I probably would’ve been allowed to use each and every one of his guns had I finished all of the training he had in mind for me.  I, unfortunately, never made it past the hunting bow. The initial phase of practice involved pulling the string back and then easing it to its natural position over and over again. I was more of a reader anyway.

My mom, however, gave herself an honorary degree (along with a license to kill) shortly before I was born. The target was my father which isn't very surprising considering the likelihood of gun-related homicides are 2.7 times more likely for people with guns in their homes.

My father was very attractive to barflies.  That isn’t to say that he’s a beast only fit for the dim lights of a dive bar, but he is very...average.  His rock hard beer belly gives the impression that he is in the cauldron smuggling business.  The inside of his pick-up truck smells like the oil derricks he has to drive by every day on his way to work.  For those of you unfamiliar with the smell, it’s very similar to beer farts.

Not my father

Nevertheless, my hometown’s standards aren’t those of Carrie Bradshaw.  My father owned his house (trailer), was in the process of building a much nicer one (made of wood!), had a steady job, and looked like someone you wouldn’t like to piss off.  He was a Centralia catch, at least in the eyes of his future live-in girlfriend.

During her pregnancy with me, my mother had multiple complications.  I literally almost killed my mother multiple times before I even made it into this world.  Because of this, she was on and off of bed rest for the majority of her third trimester.

Not my mom

Most Centralians will claim to believe in God, though few will regularly attend church.  They do borrow some of the premises, however.  Instead of prayer circles, they had that-deadbeat-husband-of-yours-is-getting-awful-friendly-with-so-and-so-at-such-and-such circles.  During one of the “off” periods of her third trimester, my mom received a call from just such a circle.  She did what any pregnant woman would do: she grabbed the first rifle she could find in the gun cabinet, set it in the passenger seat of her car, and drove into town to bring my father home from whichever seedy bar he had chosen that night.

This may seem like a kidnapping, but considering my mother’s height (5’4”) and the fact that she left the gun in the car, the altercation took a much more domestic route.  It must have been an embarrassing spectacle for all parties involved. As someone who has been in a yelling match with both of them, I can say that my mother can cause a much more effective scene than my father.  Eventually, he bowed to the inevitable and got into the car.

I’d like to think that if time travel were possible, I would go back and tell my dad to nod and apologize, but I know myself too well.  Remembering how the story ends, I’d grab whatever passed for popcorn back then and watch the magic unfold.  The car ride was silent until they reached their street.  Then the void was filled with baritone and alto screams.  They finally reached the trailer where my mom grabbed the gun and waved it as they made their cacophonous way into their home. Who won this specific argument is still dependent upon who you ask.  What is known is what happened next.

My father drunkenly told my mom that she didn’t even know how to load a gun.  And that’s how my mom, in a successful effort to prove him wrong, shot a hole in the roof.