Mom, do you still love me?

Yes, but not as much as I did, yesterday.

I’d accepted that… I needed to earn back the love I’d so brutally destroyed moments earlier. She was easy – I’d have it back, with interest, by noon.

So, what was my wicked act that caused her to say this to me? Who knows; until I hit 30, those conversations were a dime a dozen.

It was the if you don’t stop I’m going to take you back to the Katie store and exchange you for a nicer Katie that made my blue eyes puffy red.

Once. She said that sentence once. I fell to the floor in convulsive tears (I’m laughing so hard remembering this) and shed half my weight in salt after she said those words. Clearly, my mom was being funny and never expected that reaction out of me. She felt so bad, that she never said it again. But did I deserve it? What do you think?

There was that time I…

…covered my sister head-to-toe in Vaseline and baby powder, so I could have my very own Casper the Friendly Ghost; hid a dog in my bedroom for weeks so my parents wouldn’t know I had a new pet; was told by a teacher that he liked having me as a student in his class as much as he’d like bamboo shoots up his fingernails; snuck onto the train at Darien Lake while my grandmother was babysitting and she searched the amusement park for hours looking for me; hid a cat in my room for a month so my parents wouldn’t know I had a new pet; was nicknamed Ma Bell by my school’s principal for prank calling a boy and pretending to like him so my friends and I could all laugh; fed my sister an entire bottle of decongestant so that I could be the only daughter again; hid in my grandparents very expensive grandfather clock while my family turned the house upside down searching for me; stole my parents’ car…in diapers (me – not the car), and drove it into the garage door as my brother walked by and had to dive for his life; told my sister the devil was on the phone for her and he didn’t sound happy…she cried for hours after that call (special thanks to my brother for doing the devil’s voice)…

Yep. Let’s just say Mom should have held onto the receipt from the Katie store. For months after she said that I had nightmares that she traded me for one of the kids across the street. Every time their mom would stop over, the moment I saw her on our front porch, I would beeline my ass to the couch and hide behind it. I legitimately thought I was a goner. 

Now…the nightmares about my trade weren’t because the neighbor was a bad mom. She was definitely another mother of the year, but I liked my original mom, as I had spent five long years diligently training her…and a couple months prior to my convulsive tear-fest I jabbed a spade in the neighbor’s youngest son’s knee…and then ran away as he lay there with it dangling from the wound.

To this day, every time I see my friend Matt, he retells that story…and we just giggle.

As you can see, from day one I was a star…after Mimi gave birth to me, they were bringing her back to her room and she made them stop at the nurses’ station, so she could call her mom and say I have my little girl. Little did she know that hers was about to become a life of Katie’s Daily Shenanigans.

I wasn’t a bad apple, but I was mischievous… and naughty to the core; cheeky from the get-go and more than deserving of a mom who loved me a little less every day of my childhood. Who are we kidding…I was the apple of her eye.

Thankfully, by high school, I had learned to exclude her from those shenanigans. I always told her about them and one time someone said to her, you’re very lucky. You have a daughter who tells you everything. To which my mom responded, yes, and I wish she wouldn’t.

Of course, we all have stories like mine.