My Mom believes in all conspiracy theories. All of them. She’s made me too paranoid to actually list them here, but believe you me, if it has to do with a small cabal of evil-doers controlling every aspect of the world’s geopolitical, economic and social conditions, she subscribes to it. She attends an annual Conspiracy Theory conference: (Yes, they actually have those.)
Me: She can’t come to B’s graduation ceremony?? She’s spending the entire day there?!
Dad: Apparently so.
Me: Do they serve lunch?
Dad: Yes, but everyone is too paranoid to eat it.
My Mom goes to India each year to visit her Guru and has taken me with her twice. The first time was great; the second time was not so great. The second visit, while lovely on many levels, included up to seven hours a day of sitting on a marble floor. Marble, while beautiful, is not the most cushiony surface on which to rest your bum for an extended period of time. This situation was exacerbated by the fact that I fractured my tailbone on my 21st birthday (I know!) and suffer from an acute pain in the ass when forced to sit for too long. This agony, combined with waking at 4:00 AM each morning and the 104 degree heat, did not translate into a wonderful vacation. There was also the near-death experience my sister had after contracting some lethal virus, and the cockroach invasion which culminated in the two of us spraying the giant bugs with hair spray, but it’s all too traumatic to relive at the moment.
My Mom believes that earth changes will cause all of California, and much of Nevada, to fall into the Pacific Ocean following a catastrophic earthquake. (For any Arizona readers, you could soon be the proud owners of beach front property!) Consequently, she makes my Dad keep food (some kind of crazy bunker food that lasts like 15 years) and about a million gallons of fresh water stored in the garage. And a raft. But because my Dad doesn’t subscribe to these prophesies, she threatens that he will have to swim for it and by God, he’ll feel stupid then.
She despises microwaves and yells when she catches me spiking my coffee with flavored Coffee Mate. Yum! But what is a little shot of vanilla heaven for me is pure unadulterated poison to her.
This is a typical dinnertime exchange, one that actually happened when we went out to dinner to celebrate her birthday last year:
Me: Um, hi. Yes. I think I’ll order the flank steak, well-done please.
Mom: Did you know that my friend’s sister’s cousin’s hair dresser just died? It was a horrible and gruesome death. Of an undiagnosed brain disease that could have been Mad Cow DISEASE?!? They just don’t know enough about this…
Me: Well, I guess I’ll order the salmon then.
Mom: Aren’t you concerned about mercury poisoning??
Me: I’ll just take a salad. Sigh.
When I was about ten, my Mom made me take EST. EST was a course coming out of the whole human potential movement of the 1960s and 70s. It was, I believe, usually taught in a large group setting and the goal was to get you to get IT. I still have no idea what this means. I only remember scant details about the two-day weekend seminar (where my Mom dropped me off in the huge ballroom of a San Francisco hotel) and they are as follows:
1. Everyone had to get up on stage and tell the entire group about the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to them. EVER. I remember telling the story of how, during my family’s brief move to New York when I was about three, my Poodle drowned by falling through the ice of a pond across the street. I cannot remember if this charming little yarn was a crowd-pleaser or not.
2. They would not let you go to the bathroom. Like, at all. Until the end of the day.
3. They served pretty good chicken for lunch.
So, to recap: adults are mean authoritarians who want you to get IT and make ten year olds confront their fear of public speaking while detailing their most damaging life experience to date; holding your pee all day is not a good thing; and despite the trauma endured I could still enjoy a good chicken breast. And that, my friends, is what I learned at EST.
There is this whole other story of how my Mom took me to a psychic surgeon when I was about 14, but that will have to wait for another day. Oh! And the photo of the Russian healer that she taped (with actual Scotch tape!) to her head after falling down and cracking her skull on the floor of a hotel room. Yes, that’s a good one too.
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