“Mother!”
I am downstairs in the basement pantry searching for a vegetable to have with dinner.
“Mother! I need you!”
I step to the bottom of the stairs and call up, “Maj, I am busy and I am in the basement. What are the chances you can deal with this problem yourself?”
“Mother, I said I need you! Why would I say I need you if I don’t in fact need you?”
“Oh fine,” I hurry up the stairs, “but this had better be important.” I walk quickly through the kitchen and pause in the doorway that leads to the dining room. Maj is sitting alone at the table, “What exactly seems to be the problem?”
She extends a careless arm with palm outstretched, “I dropped my fork and I need you to get me another one.”
“Seriously?”
“What? I need a fork.”
“You called me all the way upstairs like there is an emergency and the name of this emergency is that you have dropped your fork?”
“What’s your point, Mother?”
I lean to look beneath the table, “You didn’t even pick up the fork you dropped? What is wrong with you?”
“Jackie licked it. No way I’m touching that fork.”
“I know you are kidding me.”
She leans back in her seat to stretch her leg beneath the table, “How about I kick it to you?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
She swipes her leg in an arc along the floor, failing to make contact with the errant fork, “Mother, you are always telling me to be a problem-solver, and now here I am solving a problem and you are all unimpressed and contrary.”
“You kick that fork at me, and you are going to have a bigger problem to solve than a bit of forked dog slobber.”
She slumps lower in her seat, but before trying to kick the fork again, she hesitates, “Wait. What do you mean I will have a bigger problem?”
I speak casually, “You will have the problem of having me fashion that fork into a necklace charm of failure and incompetence that you will be forced to wear every day for the next week.”
She gasps, “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. You will wear it as a badge of shame . . . the Silver Tines of Deficiency.”
“Mother! What is wrong with you?”
“We’ll call it an STD for short.”
“Wait . . . doesn’t that stand for something else? I think it does.”
I compose an imaginary letter, “Dear Maj’s Teachers, Please be sensitive to Maj this week, as she carries an STD with her at all times. These are difficult tines for her, and I appreciate your support. Yours sincerely, Maj’s awesome mother.”
“Ha ha. Difficult tines. You are hilarious.” Maj pulls her sleeve over her hand and ducks below the table to retrieve the fork, “Mother, you drive me insane.” She reappears and drops the fork onto the table, “Now will you get me another fork?”
“Nope.”
Her voice is filled with exasperation, “Why not? You’re closer to the forks than I am!”
“First? You didn’t say please. Second? When you called me and behaved as though there was an emergency, I was all the way downstairs and not even closer to the forks than you are. Third? It’s not even time for dinner yet, and I do not even know why you are sitting at the table in the first place.”
She looks at me in surprise, “I was fork-juggling.”
I sigh, “Obviously. So how many of the forks were you juggling?”
She is again surprised I need to ask, “Just mine.”
“You were juggling a single fork and you dropped it?”
“What’s your point?”
“Sometimes, I am so proud to be your mother, I can hardly stand it.”
“Sarcasm does not make you cuter, Mother.”
“Makes me happier, though . . . helps me to bear the shame of what is likely to be your future.”
“And in this future . . . “
“You have no arms. Poor uncoordinated you.”
“Wait. Why doesn’t future-me have any arms?”
“Tragic episode of single-chainsaw juggling. Obviously.”
“Seriously, Mother? You are insane.”
“Poor me. Everybody will be all judgy about why I let you juggle a chainsaw when you were so clearly a candidate for an STD, and I will have to explain that there is only so much a mother can do to protect her daughter from STDs. There comes a time when one has to let one’s dumb-ass daughter juggle a chainsaw if that is what she is determined to do.”
Maj stares at me and then changes the subject, “When are we going to eat dinner, anyway?”
“I was in the process of trying to decide on a vegetable when I had to come up here and deal with your juggly lameness.” I turn to leave.
“Mother, wait!”
“Yes, Maj?”
“What about my fork?”
“What about it?”
“I still need a new one.”
“Newsflash, Maj. When you are almost a teenager, getting yourself a fork after you have juggle-doomed the first one falls into the Look, I can do it all by myself, Mommy! category.”
“AUGH! Why did I even call you up here?”
“Yes, Maj. That is the question, isn’t it?”
She pushes herself away from the table and stomps past me into the kitchen, “Fine.”
“Ooooh, Maj! You should try to get your new fork with your toes!”
She stares at me.
I giggle, “Never too soon to start practicing for your double-amputee future.”
I walk down the stairs, calling back up behind me, “And Maj?”
“Yes?”
“If you are ever thinking of single-chainsaw juggling?”
Maj stands at the top of the stairs, “Yes?”
“Just think about how painful it would be to carry that STD around with you.”
She snorts with laughter, “You would make me a chainsaw necklace charm of shame?”
“I so would. Hey, what about peas?”
“Peas are good. Throw them up to me.”
I stand at the bottom of the stairs and gently toss the sealed bag of frozen peas up to Maj.
She misses.
Obviously.
“AUGH! JACKIE, GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM THE PEAS! HELP ME, MOTHER!”
“Seriously, Maj? So much motherly pride right now.”
“EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY AND CHAOS OF PEAS!”
Sigh.
