SPIT IT OUT

My mom is the worst storyteller of all time.  I mean THE WORST.

Not like, "well, sometimes she gets a little sidetracked and it can be a little frustrating," but like, "I'M SERIOUSLY GOING TO KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T MAKE YOUR POINT WITHIN THE NEXT 30 SECONDS."

For example:


Mom:  Wanna hear a joke?!

Family:  Sure.

Mom:  Ok so a Mormon, a Jew and a Christian walk into a bar.  They meet a genie there and the genie tells them they each get one wish.  So the Mormon's like, "ohhh I want to have like, 40 wives cause it's cool in my religion" and the Jew's like, "sweet, I want the whole world to eat Kosher so life's easier for us" and THEN the Christian's like, ....
...
....shit.

Family:  ?

Mom:  You guys I forgot the punch line.

Family:   SERIOUSLY?!

Mom:  Sorry guys.



At this point it's not even funny anymore it's just frustrating as hell.

So today my mom calls me.  And prompts me to write this blog.

I am going to try to recreate to the best of my ability the conversation we had:

Me:  Hey mom.

Mom:  Hey.  Ok so I have something to tell you.

Me:  ...ok...

Mom:  Ok..  So today I went to Trader Joe's to pick up some things.  ...And I got the BEST little tangerines - what are you doing tonight?!  Wanna come over for dinner??? I'm thinking of making -

Me:  MOM.  Focus.

Mom:  Oh ok sorry.  Ok so you'll never believe who I ran into.

Me: ....

Mom:  Well don't you want to know?!?!?!

Me: (facepalm) Yes mom, who did you run into.

Mom:  Oh and we brought you back this block of cheese from this AMAZING place.  You like sharp cheddar right?  Anyway you can pick it up when you come over for dinner tonight.

Me:  WHO DID YOU RUN INTO MOM.

Mom:  Right.  LISA FREEMAN (neighbor).  And it was SO crazy because we ended up crying.

Me:  Mom....there's a whole lot that you left out in between you running into a neighbor and you ending up crying with that neighbor.

Mom:  Well we were just both talking about our families and we're both going through some stuff.  And did you know they have a cat too??  Can you believe it?  After all these years and we BOTH still have cats I just thought -

Me:  MOM WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME

Mom:  Oh sorry.  Anyway so we started talking about how Joel and I came up and joined you for bar trivia recently.

Me:  Ok, cool.

Mom:  And HERE'S the part I wanted to tell you

Me:  ......

Mom:  Do you not want to know?

Me:  I'm listening mom.

Mom:  So, you don't want to know.

Now before I conclude the conversation we had, let me explain to you what exactly is going on here.

For some reason, my mother's controlling nature leads her to take control of every conversation by making the person on the other line constantly repeat things, and ask her questions about THE FUCKING THING SHE CALLED TO TELL THEM ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

So basically, if I refused to play into her game, I would be crossing all sorts of boundaries and upsetting the space-time continuum.

In other words, unless I replied to her with, "WHAT MOM WHAT IS THIS THING YOU HAVE BEEN TRYING TO TELL ME FOR 20 MINUTES THAT I HAVE ASKED YOU ABOUT 4 TIMES THAT NOW YOU ARE HOLDING HOSTAGE SO I WILL ASK YOU ONE MORE GOD DAMN TIME TO STROKE YOUR TWISTED EGO," she'd actually just not tell me in order to spite me.

But today?  I wasn't having it.

Me:  Ok mom, I'm hanging up the phone now.

Mom:  Ok...bye

::click::

And that was it.  I refused to play into her game.  I refused to continually hound her for information that I don't even know if I really cared about to begin with!

YOU called ME mom, YOU get to tell ME the story.  This isn't fucking reading rainbow where the story requires audience participation in order to move forward.

Anyway.  That's my rant for the day.

WTF RIGHT?!