(It’s a school morning and my mother and I are quizzing my 6-year-old niece on her spelling as she gets ready.)
Mother: “Spell… green.”
Niece: “G-r-e-e-n.”
Mother: “Very good!”
Me: *thinking it might be a challenge* “How about purple?”
Niece: “P-u-r-p-l-e.”
Me: *laughs* “Right.”
Mother: *as my niece finishes dressing* “Now, how about breakfast?”
(My niece gives us an exasperated look.)
Niece: “You know I can’t spell that!”
(I am 16. I’d just gotten home from a two-day fishing trip with my best friend. I find my stack of adult magazines that I thought I’d hidden pretty well sitting on my bed. There’s a note on it that reads: ‘We need to talk. –Mom’. Knowing that I’m busted, and dreading the worst, I go see my mother and father who are in the dining room having dinner.)
Me: “Uh, you wanted to see me?”
Mom: “Yes. Mind telling me about what I found in your closet?”
Me: “Uh, yeah. Those… uh…”
Mom: “Honestly, you need to hide them a little better. I don’t like finding that stuff because, frankly, I don’t want to think of you doing ‘that stuff’ in your room. Imagine my shock when I opened the Candyland box. It felt a little heavy, and that was a dead give-away. I mean, what were you thinking? You know we keep all the board games in your closet.”
Me: “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll… what? Hide them better?”
Mom: “Also, if you want a subscription or something, let me know. I noticed a lot of your stuff is pretty old and you probably paid somebody way more than they’re worth. Since you check the mail anyway I wouldn’t have to see them.”
Me: “What? No, I don’t need a subscription.”
Dad: “Honestly, we were both a little surprised. Your mother and I were pretty convinced you were gay.”
Me: “What?! I’m not gay.”
Mom: “We know, sweetie. I found your stash, remember?”
Me: “Well yeah, but you actually thought I was gay?”
Dad: “Well you do…” *air quotes* “…’go fishing’ with [best friend] almost every week, sometimes you’ll even go in the afternoons after school. We thought it was kind of suspicious. Especially since you almost never bring home any fish.”
(This is true: I generally fish catch-and-release, so I never bring anything back.)
Me: “But [best friend] isn’t gay either. We really do like to fish that much.”
Dad: “Well, just saying. Not that we weren’t going to be supportive, you know. You can always come to us with things like this, your sexuality doesn’t matter to us, as long as you’re not dating a loser. Actually, your mother was kind of hurt that you hadn’t come out to us yet. [Best friend] is really nice, smart, funny, and handy with tools; you two would have made a great couple.”
Me: “But, we’re not gay!”
Mom: “Yes, sweetie, we know. But if you were, he’s quite the catch. Even [friend’s mother] thought you two made a nice pairing. We talked to her not last week about whether he’d said anything to her yet. She’ll be so disappointed.”
Me: “But… we’re not…”
(My 4-year-old daughter has only recently realized that all people die, and being a very curious girl, has been asking a lot of questions about why and how people die. I have explained that when people die we bury their body in a cemetery. A few days later, we drive past a cemetery close to our house.)
Daughter: “Mom, is that the landfill where we bury the bodies?”
(I am on a very long car trip with my dad and 4 siblings. My youngest brother is about 9. We are several hours away from home, and getting bored, so we start reading signs along the highway.)
Me: *spotting a sign* “‘Entering Warrior City limits.’ Warrior, Alabama? Who comes up with these names?”
Brother: *sees a business billboard* “Warrior Dentistry… They must be armed to the teeth.”
(My husband and I are out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with my family, six adults in all. My dad is sitting at one end of the table, and my mother is at the other. At the end of the meal, we always read our fortune cookies to each other.)
Dad: *reads his fortunes and laughs*
Mom: “What did you get?”
Dad: *smiles smugly* “I can’t say.”
Mom: “Oh, come on. Tell me.”
(He passes the fortune to my sister.)
Sister: *laughs* “He’s right, he can’t say.”
Mom: “Just tell me!”
(The fortune is passed from person to person down the table, and each person laughs and gives my mother the same response. All the while she is getting more and more upset with us, demanding that we tell her what is says. Finally, after being passed through every other family member, the fortune reaches my mother.)
Mom: *reading fortune aloud* “A modest man does not speak of himself.”
This story was included in our Chinese Restaurant Roundup.
