“So did you get a new TV with the money I gave you?” I asked my mom on the phone, silently vowing that I would not hang up on her in mid-sentence this holiday season.
“Are you driving right now?” she asked. If I say yes, she’ll hang up.
“No.”
“Then let me tell you what happened. I waited in line for two hours. A young man in front of me got the last TV I wanted,” she started.
“So what did you do with the mon–”
“Your momma’s smart, heheh, I’m getting to that. Well this young man got the last TV ticket. So I got in the line behind him.”
“Wait, you got in the checkout line with no items to buy,” I clarified without surprise.
“Yes. When the store worker came out with the last TV, I asked him if he could please search for just one more. I told him he was smart, and hardworking and those warehouse people were lazy, bah bah bah, you know, son. Hehehehe, he laughed too. And then the man in front of me started agreeing with me and speaking for me too. So the employee said he’d go back and look because I was so nice.”
“More like he wanted to get away from two huge wastes of time.”
“I waited in that line for twenty minutes, son. I talked to the man with the last TV. He was a real talker (coming from my mom, this was horrific). He was a new father and –”
“Mom … I have to go eventually.”
“So twenty minutes later, the worker comes back with the sold out TV I wanted!”
“Really? … Really?”
It kind of hit me just then how much my mother shines in these situations. It’s her secret super power. Talking the ears off of complete strangers until they submit, to be exact. She was always a popular waittress at the various pseudo-Asian restaurants she worked at while raising my brother and me. We got a lot of toys from adoring friends or potential suitors like Chuck Mangione (a friend), one of the producers of Motel Hell, some lawyer guy, a business guy, etc. She never dated doctors, “They’re so boring,” she’d say.
My mom still talks a lot, but there’s a lot of cobwebs in place of judgement or rationality which makes it difficult to tolerate soon enough. Still, her sunny-faced smile and open-hearted chatter is probably welcome comfort for a lot of people in this hi-tech isolationist age. Remember that first time they showed Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, adorably babbling like some wrinkly midget swamp muppet. That’s my mom.
“I think he felt sorry for me because I’m a short Oriental woman.”
She’s been saying that for about four decades.
This time, I let her finish her usual questions about our health, and food intake, and snow apparel. Then I had to ask,
“Was it really worth a few dollars waiting two hours for a TV that I could have bought you on any other day?”
“Of course. It was on sale! I really love this TV. Thank you, son.”
“Well, good then.”
“Talk to you later, son. My show is on.”
That was one of the first phone conversations with my mom that she ended first without me having to say, “I’m on the freeway now.”
That’s one for mom.
——-
Speaking of Black Friday, my wife Amy had a nice little trick herself. She found some clothes on sale that she liked but she didn’t want to wait an hour in line to pay for it on the dreaded sale-iday. So, she hid it in the men’s clothes section, because men don’t shop on Black Friday. A few days later, after the crowds had left, it was still there and she bought it.
I admire these little domestic ninja tricks.
