Your Mom Said What?

With Mother’s Day upon us, it’s worth recalling the things Mom’s say. I think they call them “Momism’s.” You know, those little pieces of advice we heard from Mom that made us roll our eyes? We know they weren’t really true, but funny thing is, as we get older, we find ourselves saying them to our own children. Some I heard regularly were:

• I would never have talked to my Mother like that.
• You are going to put an eye out with that.
• You will fall and break your neck.
• “I don’t know” is not an answer. I don’t care who started it.
• If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?

This is not an exhaustive list. I am sure if I put my mind to it I could fill several pages of legal paper with these pithy sayings. There are a couple, however, that deserve special mention.

“Someday your face will freeze like that.”

I come from a very crazy family. We used to love making faces. Still do. My dear grandmother was mortified we could never take a “nice” picture. That meant a picture where we didn’t make any faces. However, as a kid, I took that Momism to heart. I mean I really believed my face could actually freeze if I held it in some horribly contorted position long enough. I can remember going to the bathroom and staring at myself for long periods of time just to make sure my face looked normal. (As normal as my face can look.) I mean, its a terrible thing to tell a kid their face could get stuck when its not really true! I still have nightmares I go into work and everyone is laughing behind my back because my mouth is sideways and my eyes are crossed!

“Wait until your Father gets home.”

This one terrified me and every kid I knew. I mean here Mom relinquishes her parental duties and drops it in the lap of unsuspecting Dad. He comes home from a hard days work and all he wants to do is have dinner and relax. Then he is greeted at the door with, “YOUR children wouldn’t do anything I told them to do. YOU take care of them!” No wonder Dad’s the world over make excuses to come home late after work!

“Come here. Let me smell your butt.”

All I can say about this one is you know you are a Mother when picking up a child to smell their butt is not only normal, its necessary! To this very day……no…..I cant go there.

There is so much more I could say, but you get the idea. The collective works of Momism’s just might fill all the great libraries of the world!

So next time you catch yourself saying “What part of no don’t you understand”? or, “I’m not running a taxi service” or “The pee is supposed to go inside the toilet”, or “I love you too” (response to “I hate you”) look toward the heavens and thank the good lord for Dear Old Mom. The impact she made on your life is greater than you could have ever imagined.