there are many things my mother does in our mother-child relationship that scream that’s she’s the mother.

buying a brooks brothers tie for the husband. (what kind of good mother-in-law doesn’t do this?) mother. 

taking a peek inside my fridge, being horrified that there’s not enough food to feed her grandchildren, and hauling tail to the supermarket to stock me up on $300 worth of essentials that clearly i’m depriving my family of. mother.

fixing my bra straps in public. mother.

there are however, things my mother does that scream that she’s the child. i blame this on the fact that my mother is the only child of two holocaust survivors.

arguing with me just for the sake of arguing. child. “The sky is blue.” “Actually, Ali, the sky isn’t really blue…it’s actually colorless, but it only looks blue to us.” uhm, okay. sure.

playing the “sulk card” when she doesn’t get her way. child. 

one-upping me on everything. child. “I have a headache, mom.” “Yeah, well, i have a migraine.” “i have tendonitis in my wrist, mom” “oh, well, i had tendonitis. in BOTH wrists!” neener, neener, so there. you can’t possibly complain, because, no matter what, she has it worse!

but last night, something happened that defies all mother-daughter laws.

i had to get up and walk out of the room because the show MY MOTHER was watching was too racy and made ME uncomfortable.  

what? what? what?

how does this even happen? especially with the woman i saw American Beauty with and was HORRIFIED during the opening scene when Kevin Spacey was doing you-know-what to his you-know-what in the shower (if you haven’t seen it. it starts with an “m” and ends with an “e” and has an “asterbat” in the middle). i looked over at her scared, scared eyes and she just said “oh!” and sat paralyzed through the entire movie.

last night she made me watch Lipstick Jungle with her, a show I’d never seen…

i watched the first 10 minutes thinking that one of the girls was Janet from Beverly Hills, and that Brooke Shields’ eyebrows STILL bother me, but dear god does she have great hair, and ohmigosh! that’s Andrew McCarthy (*swoon* even though he’s 150 years old) and then it hit me. the sex. the sex. the innuendos. the conversations. the sex. the nakedness. the elicit affairs. the sex.
THE. SEX.

and my mother was eating it all up. she was in 7th heaven. (a show i would peg her to enjoy. much more than this!)

(did i mention the sex?)

what’s happened to my mother? (hussy!)

what’s happened to me? dear lord, what’s happened to me???

i had to get up. and go upstairs. and watch the beauty that was LOST last night. Ah, Ji Yeon! and Kevin Johnson!!! Kevin Johnson! Kevin Johnson!