By Steve Fey

Well, I missed a week but I have a good excuse. My mother died last week so I wasn’t feeling particularly funny. True story is that I’d given up on her some time ago, so it wasn’t a shock, but still, it took me until now to decide to be deliberately funny again. (I tend to be unintentionally funny all the time, but I also try to get better. Still, it does amuse my family, and I’ve got to admit, with a klutz like me around, I don’t really need other idiots to make fun of. ‘Course I like doing it, so I doubt if I’ll stop.) But, just for grins, and maybe only grins I don’t know, I thought I’d think of some funny stuff about mom to publish. I mean, why not? She’s not gonna complain.

Mom had a college education. She majored in home-ec. Apparently when she went to college home-ec included some sort of mandatory "How to Overcook Everything" course, because I grew up thinking that hamburgers should be black and crispy on the edges. No bacterium grew within six feet of one of Irma’s burgers, and that’s a fact. Her spaghetti never lost its water, and it was never chewy. Her meat loaf never knew spice. On the other hand, things that needed cooked to death were always top notch. She did great Swiss steak and some darned good pastries. Her culinary skills were excellent, just somewhat limited in scope.

She had an odd way of speaking, also. For instance, a promotional effort might include some gimmick or other to suck you into paying attention. Except for her it was a "jimmick." Why that’s so I have no idea, but it might have been related to her "vinnil" flooring (That’s vinyl to the uneducated.) I’m not sure if she picked up those pronunciations at old BG (her alma mater) but she sure had them.

Not that she wasn’t a sadist. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that she was always nice. When I was a little kid she’d take me with her to walk downtown (which was an actual shopping district in those days) which I liked because we’d walk along and look at stuff. The trouble is she’d always run into some old school friend or other and talk for, oh, I’d estimate, six or seven hours in the hot sun while I had to cool my heels (the only cool part of me) and wait for them to finish. I have no idea what they talked about, because it sounded like the same thing every time. Now I ask you, is that not cruel and unusual punishment? Come on, you just talked with the woman yesterday! The Price Is Right is going to start! Come on! Okay, I never said that, but I thought it loud enough. Drat her, anyway.

There is one thing I laughed at when it happened, though. Mom was a believer in corporal punishment, usually involving a yardstick or some such implement. One day I’d been unjustly accused of some awful crime (I was always innocent. Still am.) She got a yardstick and was about to show me the finer points of English versus Metric measurements when she missed and hit the door frame. I thought that was pretty much hilarious, and lucky for me, she thought so too, so we ended up sharing a good laugh. I remember it not only because it really was funny, but also because whatever that misdeed was, it remains unpunished to this day. And now it’s too late.

Take that, mom!