And Mothers Are Just Like That

Maybe you have done it?

Participated in one of those risqué “parlor” type games?

Like when you are with a group at a Chinese restaurant, and they hand out the fortune cookies at the end of the meal, and everybody reads their fortune out loud with the added words “in bed” at the end.

Or worse yet, you are in a group, maybe at a shower or something, and everyone is given a card and the instructions to write the following sentence: “I hate [a common household task] because [and the reason you hate that task].

Then, everyone has to read back, out loud, what they have written, but this time, the sentence is “I hate sex because [and the reason you hate that task/sex].

Of course, it elicits hilarity and embarrassment . . . and that is the whole point. Naughty fun. At everyone’s expense.

And the time I did it, my innocent contribution was “I hate cleaning the lint off the dryer filter because I just can’t stand the feel of it.”

I didn’t know there would be a word substitution coming up. And one’s physiology is such that one can easily demonstrate a number of shades of red.

But I was not kidding about that lint thing. I hate it. I can’t stand it. And so I will let it build up. And to let my fingernails touch that screen and feel that vibration as I try and dislodge that lint . . . it just sends the heebee-geebees up and down my spine.

And I suppose in retrospect, it was one of those Freudian do-ies. One can hate the feel of a lot of wonderful things . . . like the tickle of butter on the back of one’s throat.

And this past week, while visiting with my octogenarian mother over the Christmas holiday . . . I was forced into that despicable ritual, again, of cleaning the lint from the dryer filter.

I don’t know what I was muttering under my breath, but mothers, being the way they are, heard me.

And then gave me one of the most valuable lessons of my life.

Just take the little dryer-freshener-softener thingy, you know, those little folded fabric things that you throw into the dryer. Those “fabric” tissues that are embedded with stuff that just blows off in the hot air and takes the snap, crackle and pop out of your socks and shorts. And ends up as some flimsy remnant of the warp and woof of a now useless backing . . . well, just fish that dang thing out when you extract the now dried clothes. And use it to clean the lint from the dryer lint-filter trap.

Viola! My fingers didn’t have to touch a nasty thing! And talk about being slick! Now that is one hint from Heloise that hunkers. And my mother was peaked with pride that she could still tell her sexagenarian son a thing or too.

And her son was quite proud with pique to actually learn a thing or too.

And mothers are just like that.

The Refectory Manager