Nuts

With Mother's Day not so far behind us, take a moment to ask yourself, is your mother just the tiniest bit insane? It seems like moms have a special kind of craziness, a protective instinct that borders on looniness and also a problem-solving ability that can be brilliant and yet slightly mad. Not that insanity is exclusive to mothers. We all have some kind of crazy within us, right? It's not just me. Yes? No? Anyone?

When my older sister and I were kids we would fight about all sorts of things, Barbies and coloring books and hairclips. Yes, hairclips. I forget what we were fighting about but one time, my Mom had enough. She pulled the two of us into our bedroom and told us to box it out. With our fists. It was genius. My sister and I just stared at her and shut up.

My older sister is now a mom herself and she has this glare that she does. A kind of hyper-widening of the eyes that comes with a shower of invisible mini daggers tipped with don't-shame-me poison that can scare my nephew and any children within a ten-mile radius, into good behavior.

Quite effective.

And then there's that mom who lost her husband then took her kids to her tyrannical parents. And she told them she was going to hide them for a little while just until she finds a husband to support them. But actually she was putting poison on the donuts which they ate for breakfast everyday.

Oh, wait, that's Flowers in the Attic. Sorry.