Always Bring a Friend

"A..........un? Th.. --- ur Mother! Ca...-------- me?"

"Mom? Is that you? What?"

"Ah....... un!! D....----...(sounds not unlike those of a masticating lion if it had a microphone shoved up its ass to record the chewing noises) ... !!!"

"Mom, I don't know where you are, or what the fuck you're doing, but I can't hear you. Or at least, I hope I can't. I'm hanging up. Love you. Bye."

I returned to what I was doing, which if memory serves me correctly, comprised of organizing my collection of comic book trading cards according to "coolness." The reprieve was short-lived, however.

"Can you ...--..-...--- now?"

"No, not really. Where are you?"

"...---.....--- HEAR ME?!"

"NO. I CAN NOT. GO AWAY UNTIL YOU HAVE SOME DECENT RECEPTION!"

"I SAID, CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

"That's better. Mom, it's.. (Holy Hell!! It was solidly 11:45! And it was a Saturday night! My Mother usually goes to bed at times that the Amish consider excessively early!) it's 11:45! Jesus, Mom what the crap are you doing up? And why is your reception so shitty? Are you at Berle's? Is everything okay?"

**Background.... My Mother at this point in her life, spent her weekends as the primary caregiver for an octegenerian half-uncle named Berle, called "Berlie." He was a parsimonious hoarder who lived alone after the death of his morbidly obese diabetic daughter, "Morlene". Morlene, called "Reener" from birth, had also been a hoarder, and had amassed an astonishing and horrific collection of Ashton-Drake porcelain dolls, even as she'd sloughed off a succession of neither-limbs and appendages as offerings to the Diabetic Dieties. Added to these was Berle's stash of rotted pecans, canned goods that spanned 5 different presidential administrations and small plastic baggies of his own bloody toenail clippings. He lived next door to the church he'd attended all his life, so being a shut-in (except on Sundays) really suited him. What he saw of the world came through his television set, the bits of trash his homeless VFW buddy, Robert brought in for him to hoard, and my Mother, whose main functions were to carefully document his bowel movements using the traditional "gold star" method, take him to the grocery store, and by stealth and cunning, to carry the trash Robert brought in, back out.


"Mom? Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you fine! You're never going to believe where I am!"

"Okay, where are you?"

"I'm driving with Berle up and down Catfish Country Road, trying to get away from Drugs Pirates!"

"...What?"

"Wooooooo!!! Ain't this fun, Berlie? (Muffled sounds of my elderly Great-Uncle, obviously not having fun.)"

"Mom? Are you okay?"

"Oh, we just had the best time! We went to the grocery store and got us a can of sausage for in the morning, and some of those frozen biscuits I like, and some grape jelly and a pack of gold stickers for Berlie's calender."

"So why are you out driving at midnight? Are you lost?"

"No! I told you we're on.."

"I heard that part. WHY are you still out driving?"

"Because those Drugs Pirates* saw me with their Drugs."
*seriously, the term she used throughout the conversation.

"Mom, I love you. I don't know what you're talking about, and I have a feeling I'd like to. So what the fuck are you doing and WHY are you doing it? And what do you mean 'drugs?'"

"Don't say "fuck!" It sounds like trash."

"Right. 'Drugs.' Explain."

"....------...awenooidn......"

"Mom? What? HELLO?"

"...------ FUCK THIS GODDAMN PIECE OF SHIT PHONE!"

"Mom... maybe you should stop driving."

"It's not the driving it this piece of shit phone. And I can't stop here."

"Why can't you pull over? Are you sure you're not lost?"

(Sound of Berle furiously mumbling from the passenger seat of my Mother's Mercedes.)

"Berlie doesn't want us to stop here. We're in nigger-town."

"Jesus fucking CHRIST just tell me why you called?!"

"That's what I'm trying to do. Berle and me were at the grocery over in Boger City. We don't like that new place."

"Of course you don't. Why should you? It's clean and well-stocked. So you drove 10 minutes out of your way to go to the shittiest grocery store in town and..."

"Berlie had a coupon."

"Fine. Please continue."

"So we get there and it's late, and dark and we were gonna go in and out reeeeal quick. We got us a buggy and went to the doors and that's when I found the brick of Marra-wanna. It looked just like a green brick, didn't it Berlie?"
(Muffled screams from the passenger seat.)

"OH, SHIT! Me and Berlie almost hit one of them!"

"One of what? A black person?"

"No! A possum."

"Okay... seriously, please start driving back to Berle's house. You're scaring him and me, and I'm not even in the car."

"I'm driving back, but I've gotta tell you this! So we found the brick of Marra-wanna, and I put it in the baby-seat on my buggy and pushed it around the store. I knew it was Marra-wanna because it smelled like my brother. I remember that smell... anyway, so I pushed it around and around while we shopped and pretty soon, all them boys that works there was followin' us around just like a parade! They all wanted to look at my green grass baby in it's seat!"
(Mom guffaws and hoots.)

"You've got to be kidding. You seriously found a fucking SLAB of weed at a grocery store and you pushed it around like a baby? For how long?!"

"Until we checked out. That's when the manager came up and said that we couldn't buy it and he took it. All them boys was sad. They bagged my sausage and the biscuits and the jelly and the stickers and OH! I also got some of that spicy mustard. They bagged it and we were going to leave, but then I looked out the windows and saw a bunch of flashlights just a'FLASHIN. Right out in the parking lot! So that's when I knew me and Berlie was in danger. So I asked them boys to escort us out and they did, and then I pulled out of the parkinglot reeeeeal sneaky like, and got about half-way home. We were almost at the Court House and I saw the lights in my mirror!"

"Like, a cars' headlights?"

"Yes! Right behind us! So I knew we'd been followed! So I decided those Drugs Pirates weren't going to take me and Berlie without a fight! He cooked on a battleship in the War! He's a soldier! So I took off and whipped around the court-square 7 or 8 good times til I got my speed up and threw them off... then I took off and we've been driving all around to confuse them ever since."


I'll skip ahead to the part where my Mother, finally at Berle's house, safe and hyper from her brush with the Pirates, continued her conversation with me regarding the evening's fun. It was the end of the conversation and she'd re-hashed (pun intended) the events gleefully several times. These were her parting words to me.

"I'll tell you what... I've never done anything so brave. But I wish I'd kept the Marra-wanna. I kind of want to take some after all I went through for it."


Post-script panoply:
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia never fucked a horse. She did, however, keep a gnarly, unwashed, one-eyed retired Military Man named Grigory Potemkin around for a few years as her principle lover. When they got tired of each other, he naturally moved into the vacant post of "Royal Pimp," spending the remainder of his grungy years hand-picking Catherine's lovers.

I don't want to think about the screening process.

Hurry up, Ha'pint! We miss you!