Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) (3 page)

Free!

It’s always exciting to get something free, even a comb. Now, we watch Oprah, where she gives away her favorite things, for free. Cars, TVs, lasagna pans. You know what my favorite thing would be?

Yes, this is the retake.

Being Oprah’s favorite thing.

But back to Picture Day.

I remember long lines of kids leading to a mysterious black curtain set up in the gym, and when you were finally ushered behind the curtain, you were in the presence of the photographer, as personable as the Wizard of Oz. He would order you to smile, blind you with a flash, and get you out of there, reeling.

Then you would wait and wait until pictures came in, which was another day of excitement. There would be the various photo packages to choose from, and you’d end up with 383,898 wallet-size photos, even if you knew only four wallets.

When those photos came back, if you looked good, you showed everybody. And if you didn’t, everybody knew.

The dreaded Retakes.

I was always a Retake. I dressed up for Retake Day, like a nervous batter on a second strike. Retakes were a mark of kiddie shame. All of us baby trolls, lined up and dressed to the nines, when nobody else was. And no more free combs. They knew we weren’t worth it. I would have been a Re-Retake if they had it, but there was only so much they could do, then.

Now, I’d ask to be retouched.

You have to be at least fifty years old to be Photoshopped.

In other words, only adults can act childish.

But those days are gone.

My school pictures, as bad as they were, are some of the forty pictures that exist of me, as a child. Kids today already have 7,384,747 photos taken of them, even before they get to Picture Day. In fact, kids have their own cameras, webcams, camera phones, and Flip videos.

Nowadays, kids get to be the Wizard of Oz.

And you know what?

That
is
progress.

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

By Lisa

Breaking up is hard to do, especially with a credit card company.

Our melodrama begins when I’m paying bills and notice a $50.00 balance on a credit card that I hadn’t used in a long time. When I checked the statement, it said that the charge was the annual fee. I was wondering if I needed to pay fifty dollars for a card I didn’t use when I clapped eyes on the interest rate.

30.24 percent.

Yes, you read that right. In other words, if I had a balance on the card at any time, they could charge me 30 percent more than the cost of all the stuff I bought.

Like a great sale, only in reverse.

I’m not stingy, but I could get money cheaper from The Mob.

I read further and saw that the Mafia, er, I mean, the credit card company, could also charge me a late fee of $39.95, which was undoubtedly a fair price for processing the transaction, as I bet their billing department is headed by Albert Einstein.

So I made a decision.

I called the customer service number, which was almost impossible to find on the statement, and as directed, plugged in my 85-digit account number. Of course, as soon as a woman answered the phone, the first question she asked was:

“What is your account number?”

I bit my tongue. They all ask this, and I always want to answer, “Why did you have me key it in? To make it harder to call customer service?”

Perish the thought.

So I told her I wanted to cancel the card, and her tone stiffened. She said, “May I ask why you wish to close your account?”

For starters, I told her about the annual fee.

“Would it make a difference if there were no annual fee?”

I wanted to answer, Is it that easy to disappear this annual fee, and if so, why do you extort it in the first place? But instead, I said only, “No, because you have a usurious interest rate and late fee.”

“Will you hold while I transfer you to a Relationship Counselor?”

I’m not making this up. This is verbatim. You can divorce your hubby easier than you can divorce your VISA card. I said for fun, “Do I have a choice?”

“Please hold,” she answered, and after a few clicks, a man came on the line.

“Thanks for patiently waiting,” he purred. His voice was deep and sexy. His accent was indeterminate, but exotic, as if he were from the Country of Love.

Meow.

Suffice it to say that the Relationship Counselor got my immediate attention. I was beginning to think we could work on our relationship, and if we met twice a week, we could turn this baby around. He sounded like a combination of Fabio and George Clooney. You know who George Clooney is. If you don’t know who Fabio is, you’re not old enough to read what follows.

“No problem,” I said. I did not say, What are you wearing?

“Please let me have your account number,” he breathed, which almost killed the mood.

So I told him and said that I wanted to cancel my card.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He sounded genuinely sad. I wanted to comfort him, and I knew exactly how.

But I didn’t say that, because it would be inappropriate.

“I have a suggestion,” he whispered.

So do I. Sign me up for 5 more cards. You have my number, all 85 digits.

“We can switch you to the no-fee card.”

I came to my senses. “Can you switch me to the no-highway-robbery interest rate?”

“Pardon me?” he asked, but I didn’t repeat it.

“Thanks, I just want to cancel the card.”

“I understand. And I respect your decision.”

He actually said that. I made up the 85 digits part, but the rest is absolutely true.

I knew what I wanted to say before I hung up. That we’d had a good run, but like a love meteor, we burned too hot, for too short a time.

Instead I said, “Thanks.”

Honestly, it’s not me.

It’s you.

Meow

By Francesca

The other day, I was walking my dog, Pip, and talking to my mom on the phone, like I always do. Dog walking is prime time for calls home. I speak into headphones that are plugged into my cell, so I’m one of those people who appears to be talking to herself. But this is New York, so that’s normal.

Anyway, I was halfway through my route, yapping away to my mom, when Pip shot in front of me, jerking the leash. Then he whipped around to face me, ears up, eyes wide, looking ready to jump into my arms like Scooby Doo. I turned around to see what had spooked him.

There stood a calico cat, back arched, tail bristling, green eyes glowering in our direction. So I thought:
Oh, silly Pip inadvertently startled this nice cat.

The cat emitted a low, rumbling growl.

Correction:
Pip inadvertently startled this not-so-nice cat.

The cat took several slow and deliberate steps toward us.

Okay, so this cat has an issue with dogs, maybe it was abused by a dog in its kittenhood. That’s okay, I’ll just take the dog out of the equation.

I picked Pip up and backed away, but the cat locked eyes with me. The farther I retreated, the faster the cat advanced.

I put on my best calm-assertive, dog-trainer voice and said, “Hey, hey, no. Bad cat. No!”

Someone tell Cesar Milan that what works on a pit bull does not work on a feisty feline. I was shocked when the cat yowled and took a swipe at my shin, after which point, I did the only sensible thing.

Turn tail and run.

So there I was, running down the sidewalk, clutching Pip to my chest like some refugee puppy, with the crazy cat chasing me. The entire thing was so absurd, I started laughing as I ran, which made me seem even more maniacal to the startled pedestrians as I streaked past.

Down the street at the corner, there was a giant puddle by the curb, and in it I saw my opportunity for escape. I leapt over the puddle in what could only be called a leap of faith, as Pip’s flying ears obscured my vision. We didn’t quite make it; my right foot landed in the edge of the puddle, splashing dirty street water all over myself.

Great.

But my water landing did succeed in thwarting Terminator Cat, who recoiled at the puddle and, with a twitchy kick of its hind leg, slunk back home to its lair.

“What is going on? Are you okay?” my mother’s voice said in my ear.

I had completely forgotten that I still had my earbuds in and my mom on the phone. I did my best to tell her the story, winded and spitting dog hair out of my mouth. “I don’t know what got the cat so mad! I love cats, and you know Pip, he never bothers the cats back home.”

This last part was only half-true.

Pip looks shaken, not stirred.

“I’m sure you didn’t do anything to provoke it,” my mom said. “Some cats just want to take a swipe at you. Like that writing teacher.”

“Huh?” I readjusted the headphone in my ear.

“That jerky writing professor, the one who was so mean to you.”

Gotta love mom-bias. I remembered now; in college, it took me two years to screw up the courage to apply for a creative writing class. I got into a workshop with my first-choice professor—a smart female author and single mother to one daughter.

Sound familiar?

I was sure we would get along.

But we didn’t.

Safe in Francesca’s arms

I did everything I could to win her over. I arrived in class promptly, participated in discussion, devoted myself to each assignment, and turned pieces in on time, double-spaced, single-sided, Arial font, just like she’d asked.

Yet somehow, everything I said or did rubbed her the wrong way. Our troubles culminated on the day of my first story workshop, when she opened the discussion by decimating my piece. The awkward silence that followed her diatribe was impenetrable; no one in the class wanted to say anything. We were dismissed early.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I can take criticism. I’m a big girl.

So I waited until I was in the privacy of my dorm room to cry.

“Yeah, that wasn’t really one of the high points of college, Mom. I ended up dropping the class, remember?”

“I do remember. However, didn’t you find out later that four other students in her advanced workshop had also dropped the class?”

“Actually, I think it was five.”

“Right. And dropping it wasn’t all you did. The next semester, you got into another workshop with the department head. And a year later, you graduated with honors and a novel as your award-winning thesis.”

Yes, my mom brags about me, to me.

Aren’t moms the best?

“So what I think you’re saying is the cat today was an assassin sent by my disgruntled writing professor? A hired hit-cat!”

“The point is,” she continued, “you believed in yourself. Not everyone will like you. Some people just want to take swipes at you. You need to trust yourself enough to ignore them.”

Or at least have a mother who loves you enough to pick you up and run away.

Holy Moly

By Lisa

I have a mole on my butt. I’m telling you, but I can’t bring myself to tell my dermatologist.

Ironic, no?

Maybe he’ll read this, give me a call, and tell me I need to come in. And I’ll get an appointment before 2023.

I go to my dermatologist every year, for a mole checkup. He puts on a visor that magnifies his eyes to the size of brown golf balls, then he rolls them all over my body, scanning my skin for bad-news moles. So far, so good. All my moles are harmless. In fact, they’re adorable, and I think my stomach sports the Big and Little Dippers.