Thursday, July 30, 2009

My mom . . . God bless 'er.

I know I've blogged about my mom before but, God love 'er, she just gives me so much material to work with. Like, for example, tonight she was saying that my niece was dancing like "Miss Gaga." My sister Erin looked at her and said "like WHOM???" My mom knew she had messed up so she thought for a second, smiled when she realized her mistake, and triumphantly stated "MADAME Gaga."

It was then that I decided that it had been too long since I had blogged about Nora.

My mom is terrible with cars. I mean, I've really never seen anything like it. I used to drive a black Mustang and she was ALWAYS getting it confused with other cars. I picked her up for lunch one day in said Mustang and I parked it toward the back of the parking lot. After lunch, we walked back toward my car - Correction: I walked back toward my car. My mom, on the other hand, walked toward every black car in the parking lot. First, she started heading toward a black Grand Am until I said "No, Mom - that's not mine." Then she walked toward a black Camaro until I said "Nope." After that, she walked toward a gray Honda Civic with the entire back end smashed in so I said "Still not it" and started laughing at her. She shook her head and said "You kids - you think it's so easy." I very kindly pointed out to her that that one SHOULD have been easy since she hadn't heard me talking about getting rear-ended lately. But she just ignored me and followed me to my car. I handled it very maturely by calling my sisters and Jill and laughing with them while my mom sat in my passenger seat, shaking her head and saying "You kids . . ."

That Mustang really threw her off when I had it. After I bought my house, my mom was following me to my new place. She had only been there a couple of times and isn't great with directions . . . but that's a whole other blog, friends. So I knew if I lost her, she wouldn't be able to find my house. I looked back in my rearview mirror and saw her behind me. A few minutes later, I looked for her again and she was gone. I was so confused. It was pretty late at night and there were very few people on the road so I had no idea how I could have lost her. I slowed down thinking she had just dropped too far behind me but she never re-appeared. Unfortunately, she had left her cell phone at home so I couldn't call her up to see where the heck she was. It was all very strange.

I decided to just go on to my house to wait for her, hoping that she'd find her way there. But she never showed up. Instead, about 45 minutes later she called me to tell me that she was back home. I asked her where she had gone and she told me that she had been following me and was wondering why I was taking such a circuitous route to my house. She thought it seemed strange that I was going through a bunch of different neighborhoods and wondered why none of it seemed familiar. And then "I" pulled into a driveway and got out of "my" car. That's when my mom realized that she had been following a man driving a black Honda Accord. And then she realized that she had no idea where she was or how the heck to get back home. The guy got out of his car and looked at my mom, who was sitting at the foot of his driveway. She rolled down her window and said "Ummmm . . . excuse me. I thought you were my daughter. But CLEARLY you're not. I've been following you and now I have no idea where I am . . ." He proved to be a good stand-in for me because he laughed and laughed and THEN gave her directions back home. I couldn't have done better if I'd been there myself.

You would think after getting made fun of so much on this topic, she would have spent the last few years improving her knowledge about cars. Not so much. The other day, she stopped by my house to pick something up while I was at work. There was a car in the driveway that she didn't recognize so she called me and said "Catherine, there's a Sonata Hyundai in the driveway." I heard her clearly but I just wanted her to say it again so I said "A what?" She answered innocently "A black Sonata Hyundai." I assured her that it was my roommate's car and resisted the temptation to ask her about her "Impala Chevy" or my "Mustang Ford." Instead, I just decided that I'd blog about her total ignorance when it comes to cars.

Cuz I'm sweet like that.

Oh, Nora . . . what would I do without you?

1 comments:

Phyllis Eddings said...

I feel your pain, Catherine. I can recognize most cars by their form, without looking at the make & model emblems. Of course, having worked for a Lexus dealership for nearly 3 years has honed this skill, but I'm usually only thrown when it's a brand new model. I'm also good with directions, and get entirely frustrated with people who ask me for directions, and then apparently totally re-write them in their minds.