I was listening to one of the local talk stations yesterday while heading out to the paintball field, and they were taking calls for listeners to tell why their mom is the coolest. I would have called in, but talking on the phone will driving a Jeep is difficult at best. Too much background noise.
So I decided I would post what I would have said to the radio guy…
This needs some setting up…
Back in fifth grade I had this teacher, Mrs. Swanson. She was your stereotypical … nasty teacher. Big hair, glasses, grating voice. And I used to swear she had it out for me. I’m old and senile now, so I don’t remember a lot of specifics… but there was the one time she almost gave me detention for touching a 9-volt battery to my tongue. We were doing some science stuff that had to do with electricity, so we had an assortment of batteries. You put a 9-volt in front of group of boys, and what are they gonna do? They’re gonna touch their tongues to it. Anyways, she caught me doing so and yelled bout how I was going to get electrocuted or something.
Anyways, that spring, with just a few weeks left in the school year, we were out playing softball and I was our team captain. Being the captain, I had to talk to the team while they were on the bench waiting to bat, right? Figure out who is batting next, fun stuff like that. Well, Mrs. Swanson started yelling at me for turning my back on the batter… I guess she was afraid I was gonna get clocked in the back of the head by a foul ball? ( nevermind that from home plate to the bench I would have had just as much a chance of getting out of the way of a line-drive foul facing it or not.) So being the mature fifth grader that I was I politely apologized and moved to go back around the bench or something, muttering a single word under my breath. A word which also happens to be the dictionary term for a female dog.
“What did you say?” she screeched.. Ok, here I admit the limits of the fifth grade mind. My snappy comeback was about how I had an “itch”.
I was doomed. I had to write out about 20-25 times “I will not call Mrs. Swanson a bitch.” and bring it home to be signed by my mom. And just to further prove the limits of the fifth grade mind, me an my friends (who of course thought what I said was cool) figured we would forge my mom’s signature. After repeated attempts, it was painfully obvious none of us boys were going to duplicate the flowing, feminine curves of my mothers signature.
Then I realized, wait… I can forge my own writing! Thank goodness they did not let fifth graders near pens for school work. I quickly erased all the B’s and chanced them to W’s. (making it seem as if I only called her a “witch” for those keeping score.) And my plan probably would have worked with me getting maybe just a few days to a weeks worth of grounding… if it wasn’t for the fact where my mom needed to sign the paper, it was painfully obvious numerous attempts to sign for her and erease it had not already been made.
The sentence: Grounding. Two weeks.
Now we’re finally to the “why my mom is the coolest” part of the story.
Years later, she and I were having dinner and just talking. Somehow, the topic of fifth grade and Mrs. Swanson came up and I decided since over twenty years had passed, the statute of limitations surely had expired, so it was save for me to confess to her my true crime in what I had done.
After a moments pause, her response was a simple. “You’re right, looking back, she kind of was a bitch.”
Love ya mom…
3 comments ↓
Sounds like you have a helluva great mom. I hope my son gets a blog someday and writes about me like this
[...] Why my mom is the coolest [...]
She is a good Mom and a very nice person even for an ex.
Leave a Comment