Sometimes You Just Need A Good Night's Rest

I used to think it was incredibly creepy when young people call each other ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’. Only moving up a creep-notch when they refer to themselves as such, in the third person. It’s like saying, “I talk about myself in third person because I’m lonely, and I am probably going to make you feel really awkward when I joke about my mother’s suicide in a minute.”

Plus the only one who can really pull it off is a thirty-something, single mom, named Fern at the craps table in Vegas, gambling all her rent money in one roll of the die to help pay for her dying son’s surgery. Brushing the hair out of her tired face she pleads, “C’mon. Mama needs a new pair of shoes!”

Or so I thought.

I woke up one day after watching a touching, be-open-to-all-things episode of Oprah and proclaimed, “Hey, it’s really not that bad. And you know what, it’s really funny when A2 says it.” (I also woke up that week and decided I could only eat things if they were labeled “Flaming”, and that me and Bubby sometimes wearing our Mom’s underwear is really not that weird – so take it how you will) My friend, A2 doesn’t have a dying son, and she totally pulls it off. She refers to herself as "Mama" but only in the “appropriate times”. Like when I don't want to get up off the couch and pour her some more wine she'll say, "C'mon. . . do it for Mama." Or when I walk in to find her hands swaddled in gauze, she’ll awkwardly swig from the bottle and explain, “Mama isn’t allowed to use the kitchen knives anymore.”

Recently my baby sister slammed on her brakes and told me I had better stop talking like that or she was going to wash my mouth out with soap. This was shocking coming from the girl who says, “Holy fuck balls” when she’s happy about something. She once came home from work and found me watching an episode of Buffy she hadn’t seen in a while and happily exclaimed, “Oh my shit! I fucking love this goddamn show!”

We typically agree when it comes to what we approve of and what we do not approve of ('NSync = good. Andie Macdowell = bad.) But when I got a little chilly and said, “Can you turn on the heat? Mama’s getting cold,” she was appalled and ready to disown me for lack of good sense. Was it the fact that I said it with my best James Earl Jones voice, or the fact that I said it at all? I tried to argue my point, to make her see how things can change, that this could be a good thing. But she was having none of it.

“Oh really, like that time you tried to convince me being adopted was a good thing?”

“But it is.”

“Yeah, but I’m NOT ADOPTED.”

“Well, maybe you should have been.”

She stormed out of the car and into Coffee Bean. I watched her, more amused than I have been in a long time, as she stopped in the middle of the store, took a deep breath and turned around to come back to the car. Because she’s a really good sister and wanted to know if I wanted anything. I did.

“Can you get me a large iced coffee? Mama’s really thirsty.”

“I hate you,” she said storming away, mad at herself for being so patient. Which was really a mistake she could have avoided.

“Mama knows you don’t mean that!” I called after her, because sometimes waking up and changing your mind about something really is the right thing to do.