» Mums

Ghostbusters
My mum is a saint, and always has been. Here's why.

Back in the late 1980s, when I was just a lad, I was nuts over the Ghostbusters action figures and accessories. I want to brag about having the Proton Pack costume, Ecto One and Two, dozens of action figures, the Play-Doh factory, even the enormous firehouse playset, but the truth is my mum was the one who would comb the shops looking for these toys. This was before the Internet and we never had anything shipped, so on her lunch hours she would search store by store to find that one that I had pointed out in the catalogue. From her point of view they were almost certainly cheap plastic junk, but I loved them and she indulged me.

Fast forward to the mid 90s, when personal computers and K'nex have come along, and the children's toys have gone into the closet. Mum decides she needs to clear some room, and sells the ENTIRE COLLECTION for $15 at a rummage sale. The whole thing! Took years to collect and the memories of countless hours... I was devastated, and harbored resentment towards my dear sweet mum. I knew I would never see them again, and I couldn't understand why she would sell them for such a pittance.

Fast forward another ten years, to 2007. A large, mysterious box about the size of a microwave oven awaits under the Christmas tree. My mother had spent the past four months on eBay finding and purchasing Ghostbusters toys, at something like twenty times their original retail price, as many as she could find, to make up for her selling the treasured toys of my childhood.

I've never had anyone perform a gesture as loving and as deeply meaningful as that one, and I'll never forget it. I love you, Mom.
(Wed 17th Feb 2010, 3:48, More)

» Churches, temples and holy places

I've caught fire in St. Paul's Cathedral
I've been waiting for years to tell B3ta this story... ~wavy lines~

Back when Galemp was about eight years old, he and his parents toured London at Christmastime. This being the early '90s I was lovingly bundled in a huge, poofy, neon yellow ski jacket to keep warm. Wandering about the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and so on, we eventually came to St. Paul's.

I was enthralled by the space, the echoes, the windows, and especially by the votive candles. I had had a great-aunt who had recently died, and with my parents' blessing dropped my 20p in the box and dutifully lit a candle, placing it with a smile on the highest row of the tiered rack. This highest row, naturally, being at the back, with four other rows of candles under my outstretched arm.

Shortly thereafter the entire right side of my poofy winter ski coat was engulfed in flames, whereupon I was beset on all sides by persons bludgeoning me with whatever was at hand. I continued to wear that jacket for the rest of the trip and, indeed, for the rest of the winter, as a souvenier of my outstanding judgement.
(Fri 2nd Sep 2011, 17:59, More)

» How clean is your house?

Ugh
We have a family friend who is one of those compulsive hoarders you see sometimes on TV; she has a beautiful 3 story brownstone and lives entirely in the front room on the ground floor, as every other room is packed to the ceiling with rubbish. As I and my brother were unemployed we were volunteered by our mother to help her clear some space and reclaim a few rooms.

There were all the usual horrors that one would find in a hoarder's tomb: magazines from 1993, dollar-store ornaments, jars of paint, all thickly coated with a literal inch of caked dust and dog hair from her enormous St. Bernard. Among the most vile were a dessicated mouse that had been under a pile of rubbish so heavy for so long that it had been flattened to the thickness of a bookmark, and a full-blown mouse nest that was in the middle of the bedroom floor underneath a pile of clothes that had been reduced to rags at its core. Like all hoarders, our friend seizes the stinking, filthy, disease-riddled shredded items and puts them aside for later use.

Probably the most surreal part of this dungeon delve was the discovery that, for at least ten years, she had been compulsively purchasing fabric. ENTIRE BOLTS of fabric, from wholesalers and ordering them online. We pulled out as many as we could find, hundreds of yards in every color and texture imaginable, almost all of them filthy and sodden. What she was planning on doing with them, we'll never know.

Sorry there's no punchline, it was just a series of sickening and weird discoveries that I'd rather not dwell upon.
(Fri 26th Mar 2010, 21:57, More)

» Guilty Laughs

If she's reading this... I'm so sorry.
Having been with my girlfriend for about a year and being on good terms with her parents, I once took a car ride with her and her mum where we talked about the mother's difficult pregnancy. Apparently her mum had had complications and had almost lost my beloved before she was even born, with other very personal unpleasant experiences of the same sort before.

After the appropriate and murmurs of concern and mutterings of "Oh, I'm so sorry" and "Yes, how unfortunate" I could not stifle my chuckle. A quite inappropriate chuckle, as I'm sure you'll agree. Both ladies asked what was so funny. "Oh, nothing. I just remembered something." "What?" "You really don't want me to." "No, what is it?" Closing my eyes and throwing caution to the wind, I then told this joke: www.sickipedia.org/joke/view/61

We drove home in silence.

We are no longer together.
(Fri 23rd Jul 2010, 23:55, More)