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Although I am very grateful that my parents adopted me when I was five months old, making me---at least on paper, and legally---a part of an ancient family whose history can be traced back as far as the reign, in England, of Henry VIII, my mother and I became antagonists by the time I entered first grade; and, from then until my Senior year in high school, she seemed determined to embarrass, frustrate, and belittle me---especially in front of those I held dear or in esteem, like my paternal grandmother.  Because she was a stay at home mother, I spent far more time with her than with my father, a civil servant and land surveyor; and I suspect she often attempted to poison his attitude toward me.

But having such an antagonist in the household also allows for opportunities to cause aggravation.  For this brief essay, I am thinking of two ways---one caused by nature, regardless of whether I wanted to or not; and the other, deliberately caused by me.

Both of my parents were extremely uncomfortable with providing any knowledge to me of what was then called, in the school system, "sex education."  And, when I attended those classes---in third grade; once a week, on Fridays---I noticed an obvious disconnect between what we were learning in class and what my parents were willing to tolerate.  For an example (and I digress, simply to give more verisimiltude to my tale), we were told to use the word "Vagina" in a sentence at home.  The next day, a Saturday, I noticed our cocker spaniel, Buffy, licking her private part as part of the self-grooming she usually did.  So, as we sat down to lunch, I proudly announced---"I just saw Buffy licking her vagina."  My parents' reaction was so radically outraged that, for the briefest of moments, I feared for my life.  My father's hands became fists that slammed down ypon the table; my mother's face was as aghast as if she had seen a living monster.  My father spoke some profanities, and said I was never, ever, to pronounce that word, or any like it, at their table ever again.  

So my mother was very uncomfortable with sexual anatomy.  One aspect of my boyhood that she seemed unable to reoncile herself to was what is often called "morning wood."  When prepubescent boys awake with full bladder, they experience erections.  My mother could not bring herself to use the word, so she substituted the phrase, "Big in front."  Every morning when she woke me, I dashed to the bathroom; and every morning, seeing the miniature tent pole in my pajamas, she would roll her eyes, look up to Heaven as if offering a prayer to God, and say, "Oh, Jerry, you're big in front."  Every blasted morning . . . without fail . . . if she woke me, herself, she rebuked me for being "big in front."  As if I had a choice; as if I had some control.  Of course, once I evacuated my bladder, the stupid thing deflated; but every morning's wood brought, from dear old Mom, a morning rebuke, and the implied assertion that I had somehow failed in my responsibilities.

The deliberate aggravation that I wanted to mention also has to do with that same area of my anatomy.  Our area's second UHF channel (which was a novelty at the time), WKRT channel 16, provided an excellent Saturday line-up:  during late Saturday mornings, a broadcast of some comedy film, mostly from the thirties, a few from the forties, called "The Funny Farm"; then, in the late afternoon, a half hour of the Three Stooges, followed by what was then the centerpiece of my week, Shock Theater, which featured, exclusively, the Universal horror films that had been produced between 1931 and 1945.  Any Shock Theater broadcast was an event; if it also featured one of Boris Karloff's it was a major event; if that film was made between 1931 and 1939, it was what we used to call, in that vicinity, a doozie.  One of the sponsors of these features was an upscale, somewhat high end, car dealership whose advertisements on WKRT featured a ventriloquist, and a very well-dressed, dapper dummy.  The format of the commercial had three parts:  a brief dialogue with the dummy, the car pitch (what was for sale, how reasonably priced, etc.), and then the sales spokesman would say, "How did I do, boys?" and a word or words spoken by the dummy in the first part would be repeated over the audio part of the advertisements.  The very first advertisement in this series was so hilarious that I almost became hysterical with laughter when it was broadcast.  The dummy announced, to the ventriloquist, that he (the dummy) wanted to become a concert singer.  The  ventriloquist explained that the dummy needed to prepare for this by learning how to breathe from his diaphragm; the ventriloquist then began pressing on the dummy's thorax and abdomen, as if demonstrating.  The dummy's eyes would roll back as if he was sexually stimulated, and suddenly the dummy said, in a very throaty voice, "Kiss me," and planted one right on the ventriloquist's mouth.  After the sales pitch, when the spokesman said, "How did I do, boys?" the words "Kiss me" in the dummy's voice were heard over the audio.

One of my mother's long-held, and almost maniacal beliefs, was the ability of water to cause common colds and influenza.  She passionately believed that water---as after a bath, a swim, or from snow melt in February---could cause this.  Therefore, until I was ten years old, she insisted on drying me off on the couple of nights (Wednesdays and Sundays) when I bathed.  While she did not mind to allow me a good long soak in the tub, she insisted on drying me off with one of the large towels in the hamper, in order to prevent a water-caused chill.  Having heard that advertisement over a couple of Saturdays, I decided to appropriate its humor for the end part of my twice weekly bath experience.  As my mother dried me, and as her hands, covered with the towel, drew the cloth across my privates, I arched my neck, rolled my eyes, and said, in my best imitation of that dummy's voice, "Kiss me."  To this day, her responses, always the same, never fail to bring a smile to my face.  After I pronounced the words "Kiss me" in my best sultry, throaty voice, she would raise her eyes to Heaven, as if being martyred, and say, very loudly, "Oh Jerry, how could you say that?  Oh . . ."  At that point, I would burst into laughter, a laughter that would continue even after she put me to bed.  

I think, by the standard's of today's society, my mother might have been found guilty of child abuse.  She very often deliberately caused me injury:  paddling me with a ping-pong paddle, digging her always sharpened fingernails (and always painted blood-red) into the flesh of my arms until she drew blood, or making me---during summer---trim the fence lines with a hand sheers, onder strict orders that I must kneel and not sit (only lazy people sat to trim fence lines), and without an adequate supply of water.  One day at lunch, during the summer that followed eighth grade and also followed my completition of catechism class at our local church, I was enjoying my favorite kind of t.v. dinner---haddock, tater tots, and buttered peas (so that must have been a Friday, because I only ate that t.v. dinner on Fridays), my mother asked me "Would you sell your soul to save your mother from cancer?"  I, having just completed catechism and being something of a young Biblical scholar (according to the pastor at my church), I immediately replied, "Absolutely not."  Just after saying that, I placed a forkful of peas in my mouth.  As I did so, my mother stood, and swung her arm at me so that the open palm of her hand cracked me up side of the face---and all the peas flew out of my mouth across the table, on to the floor, peas everywhere.  Although the sudden pain on that side of my face called my eyes to tear up, I began laughing so hard that I forgot all about the pain.  My mother had been convinced, since her teen years, that souls could be sold to the devil for gain (although the Bible does not recognize such a transaction:  all souls belong to Jesus Christ).  I think she was genuinely shocked that I answered her question in the negative and that, in her theological view, I would not place myself into eternal damnation in order to spare her from cancer.  (Spolier alert:  she did not then, and never since then, suffer from any kind of cancer.)

Shortly before my mother passed away in January of 2013, she was sitting with me in our living room (having come to reside with us for the final days of her life,), she asked me if I knew who she really was.  I replied, "Well, I have always thought you were my mother."  She flashed a very wicked, conspiratorial smile at me and said, "Actually, I am Satan."  I immediately replied and said, "Thank you, that clarifies a lot of questions that I had while I was growing up.  Now I understand fully."  This immediately pissed her off and she refused to speak to me the rest of the afternoon.

For pure entertainment value, although sometimes injury also ensued, I never found anything quite amusing as aggravating my mother.

J-Called

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