Facts About Me for Mother’s Day

Remember when I was preparing for a marathon back when we lived in WA and Abe said something like, “And if you win, will you win more money to go to Wal-Mart with?”

Sometimes the statements my kids make reveal far too much . . . to me . . . about me.

Each of them filled out little papers about me for Mother’s Day. Here are a few examples of those telling remarks.

From Penny:

My mom likes to cook: “little hot dogs and macaroni”

I hadn’t realized how often I call little smokies and macaroni a meal.

From Goldie:

I think she is funny because: “She hardly ever does, but she sometimes does funny jokes.”

Well, all right. The thing is, I have a hard time remembering jokes when I hear them. Mostly all I’ve got is:

“What do you call a dog with no legs?”

“It doesn’t matter, he’s still not coming.”

And really, that joke can only carry one so far. (And is a little depressing to boot).

BUT, there’s another thing involved here in my “hardly ever” being funny that we must consider. It is simply a necessary caution when one is living in a home with five kids ten and under. You have to be very careful with jokes. Share even one, and you have just doomed yourself to an hour of listening to made up knock-knock and other jokes. And that hour can easily stretch into multiple hours if you don’t have a husband who eventually puts his foot down and insists that nobody may tell anymore jokes! (And sometimes I wish he’d add “ever”).

Another from Goldie:

If she had a wish she would wish for: “us to help her clean and do her hair.”

Ha! I love that she put that. I had no idea that my six year old knew me so well! Truly, sadly, there is nothing that makes me happier than my kids cleaning! Well, except maybe them playing with my hair. If they would learn that a little more fully, they could avoid a whole lot of cleaning by simply saying, “Mom how about I brush your hair while my siblings clean everything instead?” And complain about the unfairness of it all though the siblings might, I would quickly agree.

However, it turns out that  Goldie doesn’t know me perfectly. Take these two examples:

Her favorite food is: “Maybe celery?”

I wish I could be cool enough to have celery be my favorite food, but I think I only eat it on Thanksgiving at my parents’ house where tradition has somehow dictated that the feast must include celery sticks with pimento spread on them. Still, valiant effort, Goldie.

And what about this one:

Her eyes are: “?maybe blue?”

I love the two question marks. It kind of gives it that extra impact of “really not knowing” that you can usually only get when you use those double exclamation and question marks in Spanish -- which I totally know how to do on the computer. Look: ¡Hooray! and even ¿WHAT?

I wonder if my kids know that their mom can do that!