It Looked Different on the Model (22 page)

But that option wasn’t offered, and the first time we were forced to embrace was awkward at best. It was like trying to push two magnets together, each repelled by the force of the other. It would have been merciful if someone had stepped in to stop the carnage, but no one did, and the attempt continued with the approach of different angles and loss of eye contact,
until we accidentally touched chins in the agonizing dance of trying to entwine and avoid each other and we both simultaneously called that contact.

We’re simply not a huggy/touchy family, we’re just not. Previous to the chin brush, I don’t believe my mother and I had had any deliberate touching since I was about seven, and even up to that point it was merely concerning the matter of tying my shoes or washing my hair. If you wanted a hug, that’s what stuffed animals and kindergarten teachers were for. My mother had dusting, vacuuming, and mopping to do. Life wasn’t one big lovefest, is what I think she was trying to tell us, and the sooner you figured that out, the better off you were. Wanna be hugged a lot? Walk slow past vans.

I’ve never asked my mother why we were not a hugging family, because I already knew the answer. “Well, did you want to be hugged or did you want to live?” she would have said. “I could have spent my time hugging you or I could have spent my time telling you not to touch hot stoves or take candy from men. Which did you want?”

To my mother’s great distress, we left Felony Camp as the most unpopular people, both our heads hanging low, neither of us being the fractured badasses she believed us to be.

“None,” my mother pointed out as we waited for my dad and sisters to pick us up, “of those people in there are normal. And I’m betting you if your daughter lives in a tunnel, your house is probably filthy and your floor hasn’t been waxed in years.”

Recognizing a foul move when she saw it, my mother never tried to enroll me in another behavior-modification camp, nor did we ever again intrude within two feet of each other’s personal space, lest our chins accidentally graze.

But that never meant that she was done throwing thoughts
of perennial terrors at me or my sisters; quite to the contrary. It was my mother’s job to steel us against harmful influences in the world; it was essential that we knew that not everyone had good intentions and that immediate trust was for people who did not grow up in New York City. If someone was nice to you for no reason, they were lying and they wanted something from you; if someone asked you for directions, they really wanted to steal your kidney; if you gave a hobo a dollar, they were going to spend it on something illegal, although to be truthful, I have failed my mother horribly in that subject. In full disclosure, I have a regular hobo that I sometimes subsidize on a corner not far from my house. He’s got one eye that looks at you and another eye that rolls around like a marble in an empty mayonnaise jar, so, really, I don’t care if he takes the two bucks I just handed him and he puts it toward a pint of the cheapest vodka made on Earth. If I had a roller in my eye socket, I’d want to catch a buzz, and if some stupid lady in a Prius handed me her spare change and said, “Now, don’t get drunk with this!” I can tell you that the stink eye shooting in her direction would be revolving at a full 360 degrees.

But if my mother saw that, she would say that’s a lesson I would most likely learn the hard way when the hobo followed me home and robbed me of everything valuable on the left side of my house, but I live several states away and she hasn’t made any plans to visit. That, however, has not hampered her need to cultivate her perennial terror output, which certainly was the case when she got email and some unnamed person—who would someday pay the price by being unprepared to answer sex-ed questions from her five-year-old—taught her where the “send” button was.

Since the advent of the combination of letters “FWD,” my mother has resurrected her quest to expose all hidden dangers
in the world, large and small, lest they pop up at some unexpected time in the form of perhaps a cellphone charger and expose themselves as the instruments of death that they are.

Or, for that matter, as people named Karen.

So when my sister called me to warn of the dangers that lie within Women Named Karen, it was clear my mother had a direct connection to it.

And there it was when I checked my email: “FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: PLEASE READ,” which in email code means “Forecasting World Destruction,” and the more times it’s repeated in the subject, the more times the world has the potential to be destroyed. It was a signal from my mother, flashing like a beacon in the middle of a dangerous and about to be decimated world sea.

Although my mother has never sent her kids any tips on life’s essentials, such as “There’s a thing called an egg and a sperm,” “Make sure to drink lots of milk to prevent bone loss,” “Boobs or kids: Pick one and go with it, because you can’t have both,” or “It’s too bad that you went to the doctor to see if you were turning albino, because we go gray everywhere, especially in parts where your colorist charges extra,” her call to nurture has never deviated from its chosen path.

As I soon as I opened the email, I was warned, “We received a call last week from the 809 area code. The woman left a message that said, ‘Hey, this is Karen. Sorry I missed you—get back to me quickly. I have something important to tell you.’ Then she repeated a phone number beginning with 809. We did not respond.”

To set the record straight, my mother did not receive a call from Karen, nor did anyone she knows, but whoever Karen called originally in 1998 typed up this Forecasting World Destruction email and sent it out into the abyss. It then took an
Oregon Trail’s worth of wormholes and then a hop on string theory during its path of destiny to finally reach my mother, who then found it terrifying enough to spread even further after reading the first use of the word coupling “DO NOT,” which began the email.

Now, it turns out that if you were curious enough to call Karen back, you’d just opened up a world of hurt for yourself, which never would have happened if you had a mother like mine. Because if your mother had valued Karen’s phone call far and above, say, “No one ever tells you this, but when you turn forty, your uterus will stage a coup that you can only fight with Vicodin, so ask your doctor for it NOW,” you would have already known that Karen’s area code—“809, 284, AND 876”—is located in the Dominican Republic. Even if you just call and say, “Hi, Karen, this is Carol Notaro, and I know you don’t have an important message for me but I put you on my prayer chain anyway!” you will apparently be charged $2,425 per minute.

YES, YOU WILL, because
your
careless mother neglected to tell you that your local phone company will not get involved and will tell you that they are simply providing the billing, and, just like that, you are out $2,425 per minute. Isn’t that scary? Wouldn’t you trade a hug to have the equivalent of your mortgage payment back? Apparently fifteen people on my mother’s email “CC: Ponzi scheme” thought it was frightening enough to keep passing it on like an open herpes sore until it finally got to me. In fact, it is so alarming that the email itself pleads for the reader to send it on.

I mean, how many times have people teetered on the precipice of calling 809? Countless.
Countless
. In fact, there are people who have to stop themselves from doing it right now. And if you loved someone, you would have the same response
my mother did (“Oh! That’s terrible! Animals!”) and immediately click the Forecasting World Destruction button, as soon as you added the names of everyone you play bingo with, go to church with, or have ever asked for a casserole recipe. Of course it seems odd that Karen coincidentally only seems to call when she knows no one will answer and then slips back into the inky, evil shadows of the Dominican Republic Area Code Scam, but that’s how those people work! Who is Karen, the answer begs? Does she know when you are sleeping? Does she know when you’re awake? Does she know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake?

And if that wasn’t terrifying enough, another ball of fright was headed my way when my mother sent me the “FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: MAKE SURE YOUR DAUGHTERS KNOW! & EVERYONE ELSE” email, which included a note that “This was written by a guy from KVLY-TV in Fargo. This is true. Scary!”

Because if that confirmation doesn’t ink this stamp of Bill O’Reilly’s approval, I don’t know what would.

It turns out that people at truck stops and Walmarts will follow you and ask you what kind of perfume you are wearing, then offer you that very perfume at a bargain-basement price. According to the Guy From KVLY-TV in Fargo, the men will stand between parked cars and ask you to sniff the perfume they are selling, and if you haven’t already sensed the danger of a man standing between parked cars (must share a common ancestor with the Van People), when you sniff the perfume, you’ll pass out.

BECAUSE IT IS ETHER! And then you will be pickpocketed as you lie helpless on the asphalt of a discount retailer, and hopefully your fall will be strategic enough that you’ll miss both the puddle of Bud Light upchuck and the dirty diaper
from the baby whose parents are trying to sell her by the entrance.

According to email legend, this has happened in the parking lots of Big Lots, as well, and although I’m not going to comment about why I’m not sure thinning the herd is all that bad of an idea, I will say that, if there are people game for the sniff test moments before spending six bucks on sweatpants at Walmart, there is an audience for this, if anyone can capture it on film. Not to mention that if any of these centers of commerce are regular destinations—not ones visited under duress or during a kidnapping scenario—whatever scent you throw on your body bears the notes of embalming fluid or gasoline, anyway, and if spending a dollar less on it in a parking lot from a guy who has missing teeth and facial scabs is even remotely a good idea to you, then you deserve to land in that diaper and have your wallet plundered for the six dollars plus change that was in it.

Then, almost as if my mother got them in a “Violence Against Women” bundle, like independent film stations on cable, four came in quick succession like a meteor shower:

The time had come. Even though I had replied to my mother after each and every Forecasting World Destruction bulletin, telling her they were all hoaxes, she kept sending them, one after another. Finally, I felt I had no choice but to call her.

“Mom,” I began. “Thank you for sending me the emails to remind me of all the grisly ways I could potentially die.”

“No problem,” she said simply. “That’s my job.”

“Well,” I said hesitantly, “I think that it’s great that now we all know how to punch out the taillights of cars and wave our hands through the hole while we’re being held hostage in the trunk of a car by a man who plans to use our skulls as soup bowls, but the emails you are sending us aren’t true.”

“What do you mean? Of course they’re true,” my mother insisted. “They wouldn’t be able to send them around if they weren’t true.”

“Mom, remember when I was in my twenties and there was a time period of about four to six, possibly seven, years when you were very mad that I didn’t have a job?” I asked.

“Oh,” my mother replied with a laugh. “Are you trying to suggest that you have a job now?”

“Well,” I said, trying to ignore her, “what I was doing during the day was going to college in journalism school. And what I learned in journalism school was basically to check stuff out. And now
you
can do that, too. I’ve sent you a couple of replies that have a link in them to a website that can tell you if something you get in an email is true or if it’s an urban legend.”