My Mother The Monster

CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE

My mother is the worst customer. She’ll argue with you for half an hour over a $10 refund until you either call the police or give it to her just make her go away. My earliest memory at the age of four was her inside of a restaurant repeatedly screaming at someone “Give me my money back! Give me my money back!” over and over.

My mom has irresponsibly left me (age eight) and my sister (infant) unattended in a car parking lot while she goes inside and shops alone. The store manager notices us and instead of calling the cops and having her arrested as she should have, she approaches and sweetly coaxes us to come with her inside the store and find our mom, stating that it wasn’t safe out here and that she didn’t want any “bad people” to take us.

I go with her, and she takes my sister out of her car seat and leads us into the store office. She gives my sister (who is screaming her freaking head off) to another employee, who gently rocks her while the manager gets my mom’s name from me and pages for her to come to the office.

When that woman appears and sees us, she turns a sinister rainbow palette of rage-induced colors that I never knew was humanly possible, while screaming a litany of profanity at eardrum-shattering levels. She rips my sister out of the employee’s arms, grabs me by the arm, and marches us out of the office and onto the main floor.

The manager follows and tries to explain that not only was she looking out for our interest, but she also didn’t want her to get arrested and have us taken away. My mom screams that poor woman’s face off right in front of everyone in the store until the whole place was so quiet you could have heard a mouse sneeze. For the first time ever at the age of eight, I genuinely felt sorry and embarrassed for an adult and almost wanted to give that woman a hug!

When we got home my mom kicked my butt all up and down the house like it was my fault for going with the woman and letting her take my sister instead of being grateful she didn’t leave her off the premises in handcuffs.

33 years later, none of us siblings have anything to do with her for obvious reasons. She actually asked my sister for money to save her house from IRS foreclosure–my sister laughed at her and hung up!