Mom deserves a lot more than just one day
LEDGER COLUMNIST

Tim GULLA LEDGER STAFF WRITER

You have to love it when kids reach the age they think they're beyond parental wisdom, or discipline.

My first experience with that all-too-wrong realization came probably close to 30 years ago, when - after getting in trouble for something I can't quite remember - I just had to give my mother a smart donkey remark.

"You can't catch me," I told her. Well, guess what?

I was wrong and she could catch me. My comment angered her so much she could have beat Secretariat in a race of any distance that day. A few good cracks on the backside set me right again and restored the proper order of the universe - if only for a few days.

Like almost any kid ever born, I likely could fill an encyclopedia with the number of times I perturbed, pestered, infuriated, annoyed, embarrassed, frightened, shocked or just downright disappointed my mother in one way or another.

Which mother hasn't heard from a child that they didn't like what she cooked for dinner? "I don't like (fill in the blank)!"

Now that I'm older and wiser, I've come to appreciate the healthful benefits of green vegetables and the importance of Lycopene (found in tomatoes and other red fruits) to men's health. But, boy oh boy, I put my mother through heck at the dinner table.

And which mother hasn't received a phone call from school and had to respond, "He did what?"

Before retirement, my mother spent most of her professional life as a nurse. Unfortunately I gave her far too many opportunities to practice her trade off the clock.

Asthmatic and allergic to everything, I was always sick, coughing, sniffling, sneezing, wheezing and occasionally confined to an oxygen tent when I was really young.

I aged into a mini Evel Knievel, just as daring but still afflicted by mold, pollen and pet allergies. My mother must have gone through miles of bandages and gallons of iodine cleaning and dressing all the wounds I brought home.

There are some studies bandied about that show the average person spends something like a year of their life sitting at stoplights, and weeks of their life just tying their shoe laces. It seems I cost my mother at least half of her life sitting in emergency rooms.

Looking back on all the dumb things I've done, I can't fathom how my mother was able to keep her sanity.

I know I can't be alone in feeling this way.

So it seems downright paltry to celebrate all that mothers do for their kids with Mother's Day.

I won't get into the origins of the holiday. There's a seemingly plausible history of it at Wikipedia.org that says, among other things, Mother's Day apparently has become the biggest day of the year for dining out.

Nothing must show love as much as this; "As an appreciation for all the cooking you do the 364 other days of the year, go ahead and pick out anything you want from the menu tonight. I have a buy-one-get-one free coupon."

Moms of the world, if you're going to be treated to just one night on the town this year, please order something nice and something you'd never make at home. Go crazy and order that surf and turf, which should never be confused with a fish sandwich and a hot dog.

And if your mother is anything like mine, chances are good she's already told you she doesn't want you to do or buy anything for her this Mother's Day. Or on those rare years when your mother admits she wants something for Mother's Day, it's likely she's asked you for something practical, such as a new frying pan.

While I can fully appreciate the sensibility and need for a good frying pan, I have to believe that if we're going to honor mothers at all it has to be done with some sense of style and luxury.

And how much luxury you direct towards your mother on Mother's Day should really coincide with the amount of hell you put her through in your youth. There should be a standardized mathematical equation for this.

For instance, the gift should cost something like $50 for every invitation she received for a one-on-one meeting with your school principal, or $10 for every time she tried to fix the chain on your bicycle as a kid so you could keep riding.

Or how about $5 for every mile she had to drive to pick you up when you were stranded on the road somewhere out of town with a broken-down car as a 16-year-old driver, but you were supposed to be somewhere else and she thought she knew where you were?

And while this never happened to me, thank goodness, the gift should cost at least $1,000 if your mother ever had to post your bond at the county lockup.

Multiply those amounts for repeat occurrences and you get the idea.

So based on my fuzzy math and other dollar amounts I've been able to assign for a whole host of other child-againstmother transgressions, my mother will be receiving a minklined stateroom for life on the Queen Mary II to travel the world over and over again visiting exotic, faraway lands as the new owner of Macy's, Mercedes, Microsoft and the Dallas Cowboys this Mother's Day.

Thanks mom. You may have to wait a little while for the gift, though.