It’s 2017 and I have decided that I will be writing monthly this year.  Granted, I did wait until the very last hour of the very last day of the first month but I promise I will make it happen monthly!  I know how much my horrible dating stories are loved and, while 2016 did not disappoint on the bad date blog fodder front,  I will be talking about my mother in this month’s installment.  Now, on with the show!

My friends and I say that we will be telling “Lisa Stories” as long as we live.  Lisa is my mom.  Now, to preface, these stories are only funny now, 20 years later.  When I was growing up, my mother scared the ever living shit out of me.  It might be one of the reasons I turned out how I did.  Nothing like a good dose of fear to keep everyone in line, right?!  My favorite Lisa story is about my inflatable blow up chair.

I might be dating myself but, in the 90’s, blowup furniture was all the rage.  Even though my room was pretty small, I fit a blue, inflatable blowup chair at the end of my bed.  I had a blanket over it and I would sit and read in it.  My mother hated it.  I have no idea why as it was in my room, minding its own business.  It never did anything to her.  I did have to move it to get to one side of my closet but I had to deal with it, not her.  She was a working mom and I can’t ever remember a time she did my laundry and put it away in my closet for me.  She told me over and over again to deflate it.  I refused.

The battles my mom and I had over the course of my teenage years were epic.  My bedroom door received the brunt of her frustration.  I vividly recall slamming it closed, sitting with my back to it and my feet pressed up against my dresser so that she couldn’t get in.  She would drop a shoulder and bum rush it to try to get in, like she was a linebacker.  One of these occasions she was able to bend the door over my head and I could see the frenzied look on her face through the crack.  By the end of these years, my door consisted of just the shell, clacking together each time it was opened or closed, barely hanging by its hinges.

One day, while we were in the midst of one of these major blowout arguments, she got a mad look in her eye.  She stomped to the kitchen, grabbed the largest butcher knife we owned and marched back to my room.  She stormed past me,  violently raised her arm above her head, and began to murder my blowup chair, as if she was Norman Bates and my poor chair was Marion Crane in the shower.  Talk about Hitchcockesque.  It was a very Mommy Dearest moment.  NO MORE BLOWUP CHAIRS, EVER!  Joan Crawford would have been proud!

It didn’t end with the horrific assassination of my poor chair.  She also took offense to the collection of lotions and Bath and Body Work sprays that I had in a neat corner of my dresser.  She took them all out with one swipe of her arm.  Lotion flew through the air, like fireworks exploding, and splattered everywhere.  The bed, the walls, the ceiling, all covered in Cucumber Melon and Sun Ripened Raspberry.  My room smelled like a whore house for weeks!

Another favorite Lisa Story is one that takes place on an 880 freeway off ramp.  I went to a Catholic high school a few cities north of my hometown.  Before my friends and I could drive, our parents carpooled us the 30 minute drive to school.  My mom had the lucky job of the early AM shift.  One bright, sunshiny morning, my mom was driving my two friends and I in her purple Chrysler Town and Country.  We were in a rush, as per usual.  We were always running behind.  As we exited the freeway, what appeared to be smoke began to pour out of the hood of the van.  The power went out so we lost power steering.  My mom cranked the wheel to get us as close to the side of the road as possible, threw it into park,  jumped out of the car screaming, “It’s gonna BLOW!” and ran down the off ramp away from the spewing van!!

I jumped out and as I was beginning to run after her, I noticed that my friends were trapped in the back seat!  Even though it had been many years since my parents had little children, the bloody child locks were on!  The look of terror on their faces has stuck with me over all these years, frantically pulling on the handle, watching the only adult available high stepping as quickly as she could hustle her behind the opposite direction of the firery vehicle they were confined to.  I ran back to the van and opened the door for my friends.  They burst out of the opening screaming as the three of us ran toward my mother.  We walked/ran to the nearby gas station where my mom had to use the pay phone to call my dad for help.  More dating myself.  No cell phones… ahem.  I digress.

Before the tow truck could arrive a motorcycle cop appeared.  He told my mom he would push the car out of the way and over to the gas station.  My mom looked at him, bewildered, and asked, “With your bike?”.  He looked at her, with a classic WTF look on his face.  He replied, “Uh, no… with my hands…”.  He walked to the back of the van and proceeded to attempt to push.  He stopped, walked back up to my mom’s window and asked her to take off the parking break and put it in neutral… Poor guy.  Turns out the van was basically a lemon but wasn’t on fire.  It was steam that was pouring out of it, scaring the crap out of us all.  No excuse for my mom though.  She totally left my friends for dead.

This is just a small sample of the many fantastic Lisa Stories to choose from.  I will be speckling them in throughout the year to break up the monotony of the bad dating stuff.   Have a great rest of the week people!  See you next month!!