Conversations with my Mom

 

My mom and I lived by ourselves from the time I was four until the time I was nineteen.  After all the obligatory teenage angst years, we learned to really enjoy each other’s company (which I suppose is important if you’re going to share a dorm room in Switzerland for a few months).

We often have some pretty crazy conversations that crack me up.  Witness the following:

One-upmanship

Scene: in the hospital.  Again.

Me:  “Ouch, my hand still hurts.”  (From the IV line put in two weeks previously.)

Mom:  “My thumb still hurts.”  (From when she stabbed herself on her first day in Geneva a little over a year previously.)

Me:  “My cholecystectomy still hurts…”  (It didn’t.  But what a great word.)

Mom:  “Huh?!”

That’s Private

Scene: Just hanging out.

Mom: So, when you lost your hair, did you lose all the hair, um… down there?

Me (rolling eyes):  Mom!  I lost my hair from radiation, not chemo.  They only radiated my head!

A mistaken sense of accomplishment

Scene: Me, alone in my room with the door shut so my stepdad can’t see me, naked except for my panties and a half-on, half-off sportsbra.

Me: MOM!!!!!!!!

Mom (opening the door): Yes?

Me: I need help.  I’m stuck.

Mom: Okay.  Pick up your boobs.

Me (to myself, while complying with this strange request): Okaaaaaaaay…

Mom (after popping the bra’s fabric back over my boobs): There!

Me: Mom!  I need help taking the bra off, not putting it on!

Mom: Oh…

I’ve had my shots

Scene: out in public.  I have a cough.  A very persistent cough that had stuck with me for the past year despite three different cough syrup prescriptions.

Me: (cough, cough)

Mom (with an embarrassed look on her face): I am going to hang a sign around your neck that says I am not contagious.

Me: Yeah, the dog is not rabid…