Day 93 in Detroit. Body still intact.
While my new home is somewhere in downtown Detroit, my family still holds court on the West Coast. Once a week or so my mother and I play phone tag until we eventually end up catching one another. It usually goes something like this:
"Gigi, this is your mother! Pick up the phone! I know you're there!" That all said to my voice mail.
Mom still hasn't grasped the concept of modern technology and insists that I'm just being a bad daughter by listening to her plead with my "answering machine" and not picking up. I've explained over and over that I cannot hear her leaving messages for me. Yeah, ok, so I can see her name pop up on my phone when she calls, and one could argue that by not answering, I was technically dodging her calls... But that person would be a jerk. And obviously doesn't have a mother.
Don't get me wrong, I love my mother terribly! I always enjoy our weekly chats and usually end up in tears from laughing so hard when we talk. My mom is funny! I'm not so sure that she works at it, like a stand up comedian, but rather, mom's innate funniness comes from a place that can't be honed. You either have it or you don't. Mom has it. And with age, she just gets funnier. I know that she suspects that sometimes I'm laughing at her and not with her, and she's probably right, but mom has a great sense of humor and can roll with the punches. She's not so high and mighty that she can't laugh at herself. Thank god!
So last night, mom and I had our weekly chat and she didn't fail to amuse me. The rundown this week:
1. My brother had a tragic accident with a skill saw and is now living with a height challenged thumb. Admittedly, not funny on the surface, but come on... I can now call him Stumpy! And that's funny.
2. Great Uncle Mike died. Mom didn't know and kept trying to call her cousin but continued to get the answering machine. After a week, her cousin finally answered and mom says, "You must have been staying with your dad," to which her cousin replies, "I just got back from his viewing." Now, mom's getting up there in age. Not quite old enough to retire, but definitely old enough to be living in the shadow of the valley of cardiac arrest. This one was a close call. Had her computer been working, she would have known about the old guys death and this whole embarassing conversation could have been avoided. But no...
3. Mom's computer "has come down with a terrible virus"- her words. She told me in a manner that you might whisper to your girlfriend, "I hear Marge has come down with the Alzheimer's". I could almost imagine her shaking her head in serious consternation over the whole downfall of modern technology. When I asked her what virus her computer had (yeah, like I would know?) she gravely told me that it had Spyware. I audibly gasped, but really only for affect, since I don't really know what that is. I suspect that it's something that most computers become afflicted with at some time or another but didn't know that it was deadly.
Sadly, due to the critical state of her computer, mom wasn't able to see the cool pictures that I sent her of the crackhouse across the street from my apartment. I was wondering why I hadn't heard back from her. I figured those pictures would have warranted a "stop what you're doing, drop everything and buy your daughter a one way ticket back to California" kind of response. I was beginning to think that she didn't care. But it turns out that the Spyware disease just ate the pictures. Asshole! I was really looking forward to mom's opinion of the crackhouse. Well, this just buys me time to scoot down to the end of my street and take pictures of the hookers sporting their new spring fashions. Those will make a lovely addition to my crackhouse retrospective. That should really get mom's heart beating!
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