Here comes another rant.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
My mother and father just returned from a trip to the New England states yesterday. They were there during the torrential rain. Didn't see a single leaf. She says. She has a right to complain about the weather. What a shit week for a vacation. My father's experience; wonderful, just wonderful; couldn's have asked for anything better. My mother's experience; Everything is negative, typical. Can barely say a good thing. Did you get to the craft store you wanted to go to? I ask. Yes, but someone had just gone to the bathroom and stank the whole place up. I couldn't walk through the store without my hand over my nose, it was awful. Have I mentioned that my mother has a fascination with all things related to bathrooms, toilets, potty humour, etc. It makes her giddy. There must be some disorder related to this.
One thing she did say that was positive, however was The people were sooo nice. She goes on and on describes the conversations she has had over the course of 9 days in great detail. Well, mom, they are in the hospitality business, that's why they were so, um, hospitable, maybe. One guy gave us directions and they were so very specific and we got there without any trouble. O.K., great. My mother loves anyone who fawns over her. But who has she ever fawned over? Hmmm.
In the course of one description of a conversation she has with a small shop owner in a small town in New York state, she tells me that he has never been to Canada and he tells her that he thinks it must be nice to live in Canada, where we have no crime, and people are all so friendly. She says to him oh, but we have terrible, awful crime and the people are just rude and terrible. Well, to some extent she is right; we do have crime and everyone is not friendly. But her scale is way off the mark. Compared to large American cities, our crime is substantially lower. The 10-year average homicide rates (1987-1996) for Canada averaged 2.3 per 100,000 people and for the United States averaged 8.8 per 100,000 people. But I digress.
My mother is afraid, scared, of pretty much everything. Burglars, shootings, snakes, snow storms....when she can't find her purse, this is often heard oh my god, someone stole my purse. Meanwhile, it is found later, tucked between the towels, so burglars (and she) can not find it if they are broken into.
On a recent visit with my son, I am in the living room and changing his diaper, when I notice that I can hardly see it is so dark in there. The blinds are completely drawn. It is a beautiful sunny day outside. Why are the blinds closed? I ask. She starts talking about the night before, how she heard gun shots in the neighbourhood; hadn't opened the blinds yet. Two o'clock the next afternoon. She is thinking the blinds will hold back bullets should someone shoot through their window. We do not live in east L.A., folks. A relatively small city in eastern Canada. Granted we have crime, and there are bad areas of town, and they live on the border of one of the bad areas, but dear God, a shooting through the window???? Crazy. Plain and simple paranoid behaviour.
I alternate between being annoyed and being amused by her antics.
One thing she did say that was positive, however was The people were sooo nice. She goes on and on describes the conversations she has had over the course of 9 days in great detail. Well, mom, they are in the hospitality business, that's why they were so, um, hospitable, maybe. One guy gave us directions and they were so very specific and we got there without any trouble. O.K., great. My mother loves anyone who fawns over her. But who has she ever fawned over? Hmmm.
In the course of one description of a conversation she has with a small shop owner in a small town in New York state, she tells me that he has never been to Canada and he tells her that he thinks it must be nice to live in Canada, where we have no crime, and people are all so friendly. She says to him oh, but we have terrible, awful crime and the people are just rude and terrible. Well, to some extent she is right; we do have crime and everyone is not friendly. But her scale is way off the mark. Compared to large American cities, our crime is substantially lower. The 10-year average homicide rates (1987-1996) for Canada averaged 2.3 per 100,000 people and for the United States averaged 8.8 per 100,000 people. But I digress.
My mother is afraid, scared, of pretty much everything. Burglars, shootings, snakes, snow storms....when she can't find her purse, this is often heard oh my god, someone stole my purse. Meanwhile, it is found later, tucked between the towels, so burglars (and she) can not find it if they are broken into.
On a recent visit with my son, I am in the living room and changing his diaper, when I notice that I can hardly see it is so dark in there. The blinds are completely drawn. It is a beautiful sunny day outside. Why are the blinds closed? I ask. She starts talking about the night before, how she heard gun shots in the neighbourhood; hadn't opened the blinds yet. Two o'clock the next afternoon. She is thinking the blinds will hold back bullets should someone shoot through their window. We do not live in east L.A., folks. A relatively small city in eastern Canada. Granted we have crime, and there are bad areas of town, and they live on the border of one of the bad areas, but dear God, a shooting through the window???? Crazy. Plain and simple paranoid behaviour.
I alternate between being annoyed and being amused by her antics.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 at 10:18 AM.
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1:26 PM
...and the older they get, the worse it gets. I had to really put my foor down with jessicas grandmother on her fathers side, she told jessica "dont go swimming in the ocean because a shark could kill you", dont go walking in the woods, cause a snake could bite you"....she's got hundreds of em. Almost made my kid into a worrywart about everything...finally i just had to tell her. shut up. lol