Guess I Shoulda Listened to Mom

Don’t you just hate it when your mother is always right?

The first time I remember Mom’s sage counsel was when I was four years old. All my little friends were taking dance lessons, tapping their way to future stardom and looking darling in the process. They had the cutest costumes! I SO wanted to buy into that.

At the same time, I was intrigued by the piano in my aunt’s house. Those ivories just screamed “tickle me!”

I told Mom I wanted to take dance lessons and piano lessons. Nope, she said. We can only afford one. You’ll have to choose. Making decisions was something I was pitiful at then (and not much better at now) so this threw me into a tailspin.

Wise Mom refused to make the choice for me, but she did give me these words of advice: “Carol, you’ll look pretty silly in a tutu when you’re 80.”

That mental picture did the trick. I chose piano lessons, and that decision has given me a lifetime of rewards.

Mom’s had a pretty good track record over the years. Most recently, she was highly skeptical of Obama’s promise of Hope and Change in the 2008 election. This despite the fact that my husband John was an Obama volunteer who burned two weeks of his vacation time canvassing in the Republican stronghold of Southwest Missouri while bunking at my mother’s house.

Mom and my brother Gerald have been disgusted with politics and politicians for many years. Those two Show-Me-Staters had become so jaded they weren’t even planning to vote until John and I begged them to “get out there and make a difference.”

“You want us to choose between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?” they asked.

They didn’t trust that Obama would deliver on any of his lofty promises, but we assured them it would be different this time. Obama’s the Real Deal, we said. They rolled their eyes, but at least they cast their ballots.

Alas, almost two years later we’re all still waiting for the change we had hoped for. Please President Obama, don’t let my Mom be right this time.