Tongue-In-Cheek … Foot-In-Mouth

Okay, if you are afraid of dark; if you are afraid of the living dead; if you are afraid of things that go “Bump” in the night, and if you are afraid of YOUR Mother “AaaaaaaaaaahhhHHHaaaah!” then brace yourself, AND proceed at YOUR OWN risk…

My mother can easily glare Dracula under the coffin with one eyeball tied behind her back.  The woman is a world-class professional glarer.  She’s “Dracula-Mom!”

Now, you might be asking yourself, “What is the significant of this? What’s the big deal, Bill? A little glaring never hurt anyone.” Oh, yeah? Try living with this woman.  But I mean that in a nice way.

Listen, don’t get me wrong.  My mom is wonderful lovely lady that is, until she’s angry, and then she’s not so lovely.  Being a full-blooded Italian, who stands almost four feet tall when standing on a 2 ½ foot ladder, well, to put it simply, the woman is short and dangerous, what can I tell you.  Grizzly Bears know better than to cross her path when she’s annoyed.  For the record, short Jewish mothers, who are also registered major-league glarers, have the same effect on wildlife.

Anyway, understand that most of your garden-variety moms, when irritated, have a tendency to yell, scream, threaten, ground people till they’re ninety, and eventually throw someone a good beating.  Not our mom.  Oh, no.  There was no yelling, no screaming, no grounding, no beatings, only lots and lots of glaring, and I DO mean glaring.  The woman could teach a college course in glaring: Glaring 101, with Professor Vampire MOM.

Lemme tell ya, if my mom suspected that my brother or I had done something wrong, but she did not have rock hard concrete conclusive CSI-like evidence of the alleged crime, she’d use her expert glaring ability to extract confessions out of us. She’d simply glare at us until we found ourselves admitting to stuff we didn’t even do so she’d stop with the glaring.

There was no escaping this woman; she’d glare at you until you broke. There was no hiding; there was no running; there was no bargaining; there was no shielding of your eyes; there was no nothing. Once you were in her eyeball crosshairs it was only a matter of time until you found yourself on your knees, your head bowed, your hands folded tightly together in praying formation, begging, pleading, beseeching her to stop already with the glaring.  Whatever terrible, horrible, absolutely unthinkable act that she thought you might have committed, to include voting for a Democrap for President, you’d admit to it just so she’d finally stop with the glaring!

Seriously, if I live to be three-billion-years old, I will never forget the night that my dumb older brother, Paul, came home stinking of a mixture of whisky, cow manure, Channel #5, and had hay sticking out of his zipper.  My dad looked at him, rolled his eyes, shook his head, and walked out of the room while muttering under his breath “idiot.” 

My mother glared at my brother for a solid month. Every time he’d turn around there she’d be, glaring. He’d be eating dinner and she’d be glaring at him from behind the saltshaker. He’d be watching television in the living room, and from the shadows of kitchen, he’d feel her eyeballs boring into the back of his head. He’d open the refrigerator and she’d be inside next to the low-fat milk jug, glaring. He’d be sleeping, wake up at two thirty in the morning, and she’d sitting on the end of his bed, glaring, Glaring, GLARING! The poor guy, to this day I don’t think he’s fully recovered.

It got so bad in our house that my brother and I completely stopped trying to avoid this woman. It simply wasn’t worth the effort.  I’d come home after a night out with the guys, wouldn’t even try to tip-toe past her.  I’d enter the house, look at my Dad, who’d look at me, shake his head, walk away, and mutter under his breath “these dopes will never learn.” I walked right up to Dracula-Mom and come clean on everything.

“Okay, ma, here’s what happened. There were six of us guys, a truckload of beer, and an unhappy chicken we named ‘Gladys.’  Do Ya want details?”

So anyway, as a side note, which I am passing along to my male loyal readers because not only am I your professional humor columnist, I’m also the flag bearer for the male team: “glaring” and “the look” are related, that is to say, “the look” after going through matrimonial metamorphosis resulting in maternity, evolves into “glaring.”  Theresa, my wife, would shoot the “look” at me, but recently she’s been busy glaring at the kids, thank goodness.  And I’m now the daddy who shakes my head, walks out of the room, and mutters under his breath “dopes, gald she’s not glaring at me.”  Ha!

Now the actual transition point from “the look” to “glaring” as stated above, occurs when a woman finds herself “with child,” and subsequently becomes a mother. However, having said this, if a woman is real good, I mean really, I mean really, really good, like my mom, they can execute “the look” with one eyeball and “glare” with the other eyeball.  I told you she was dangerous.  And being a man I don’t have the genetics required to administer “the look” or the “glare.” But I know them when I see them, I don’t like either one of them, and I avoid them both at all cost.

Well I have to stop typing now.  Even though my mother and father are in the state of Florida, which is roughly 1,439 miles and seven and a quarter inches away, roughly, I can still sense my mother sensing me typing this column about her, and I can sense her eyeballs glaring into the back of my head from roughly 1,439 miles and seven and a quarter inches away, roughly.  So I need to quickly call her and admit to something that I did not do so I can distract her and she’ll stop with the glaring already.

But before I call Dracula-Mom, before I pick up the receiver and punch in those numbers, I must first arm myself with four pieces of very important talking-with-your-glaring-vampire-mom-protective equipment:

1. My cross
2. My wooden stake
3. My water gun filled with Holy Water
4. My garlic necklace

If, the next time you see me, you detect two holes at the base of my neck and I’m walking around zombie-like, you know what happened–Dracula Mom!

Copyright 2008 William Drury, All Rights Reserved