My Mother Was Never A Kid

One

Getting to be thirteen turned out to be an absolute and complete anticlimax. I mean it. What a letdown. You wouldn’t believe the years I wasted dreaming about how sensational everything was going to be once I was a teenager. The way I pictured it the change was going to be fantastic. Overnight people would stop treating me like some silly little kid. Instead I’d be respected pretty much as a pre-adult, practically running my own life. Sure, ’ll still have to live at home, but mostly I’d be making my own decisions. Oh, occasionally my parents would ask me to do something, but it wouldn’t be an order—it’d be more like a suggestion.

Hah!

Victoria, that room is a pigsty. I want it cleaned up immediately, or you can forget about sleepovers for a month. That’s my mother suggesting. And another thing, she says, adding three more little nuggets of friendly advice, see that your laundry is put away before you empty the dishwasher and don’t leave the house without walking Norman. That’s our sheepdog. And, Victoria?

Yes, Mother.

Put on your jacket. It’s only May.

Wow! I must have been some jerk. Truth is, nothing’s changed except that maybe now I won’t have to listen to that rubbish about waiting till I’m a teenager. Fact is, now they use it against me. That certainly wasn’t proper behavior for a teenager. And I’m still waiting. A bike tour is a wonderful idea, but you’ll have to wait until you’re at least sixteen. Of course when I’m sixteen they’ll have moved all the good things to eighteen, and when I get there, it’ll be twenty-one. I’ll always be waiting to be old enough for this or that until I’m ninety. Then they’ll say, That’s something you should have done when you were seventeen or twenty. It seems like you’re always the wrong age. What a relief to know that in just three weeks I’ll have a birthday. Fourteen has got to be better.

Except, of course, if you have a mother like mine. You wouldn’t believe how overprotective she is. Do you know that I’m the only kid in the whole eighth grade who can’t go to the movies at night? And then she takes every little thing so seriously. Like what happened yesterday at school. I can understand her being a little upset, but in my opinion she overreacted. After all, it was the first time in my whole life that I ever got suspended. For practically nothing. And besides, I wasn’t the only one involved. There were eight of us, and just because I was the only one suspended doesn’t mean it was all my fault. Which, in fact, it wasn’t.

Personally I think it was mostly Mrs. Serrada’s fault. (In case you didn’t know, she’s the grossest English teacher in the Western Hemisphere.) But what can you expect at Brendon School? That’s this really uptight private school I go to. The kind of yessir, no-sir place where they make you wear these horrendous uniforms every day. You should see them—gray skirts with fat ugly box pleats and a vomity blue blazer with a scratchy gold emblem on the pocket that everybody always says looks like an eagle sitting on a toilet. It’s all a terrible embarrassment, and of course I detest it like crazy. A lot of good that does. I’ve been going there since the third grade. Anyway, back to what happened yesterday. There probably wouldn’t have been any trouble if dear old Serrada hadn’t picked such a boring movie for our one and only class trip all term. Actually I’ve got nothing against Shakespeare; in fact I think he’s pretty okay sometimes. He did a super job with Romeo and Juliet (the movie anyway), but Richard the Second? Spare me.

Anyway, all we did was sneak up to the balcony, mess around a little, throw a couple of gum wrappers over the railing, and smoke one cigarette. That was the worst. The cigarette, I mean. I really inhaled it deep and it made me so nauseous and dizzy that I thought I was going to fall right into the orchestra. The thought scared me so much that I slid down to the floor and just sat there waiting for my head to clear. Unfortunately my friend Liza didn’t see me, and when she tripped over my leg she grabbed Danielle and she fell too, and then everyone started fooling around and falling down. Well, everybody started laughing like crazy. And we got a little noisy because Mrs. Serrada turned around to see what was going on and spotted me holding the cigarette. And that’s when Tina Osborne shot the rolled gum wrapper. Tina swears she wasn’t aiming at Mrs. Serrada, but it hit her smack on the forehead just the same. Excellent! You should have seen old Fatso come charging up the stairs to the balcony. We all jumped up and started to scramble down the opposite staircase, but we were laughing so hard we kept stumbling into each other.

I guess the manager must have heard all the commotion because the next thing you know, the house lights go on, and we’re caught. What a hassle Fatso made about the whole thing, especially the cigarette. Nickie Rostivo tried to lighten it a little by telling her that one cigarette for eight people wasn’t too dangerous. I even pointed out that we were in the smoking section. That did it. That’s when she exploded. Normally she’s got a very soft voice, kind of sick-sweet, but when she loses her temper she sounds like a lumberjack. It’s really weird to hear that big voice boom out of such a small fat muffin of a woman. How dare you disgrace the school blah blah blah … How could you be so rude … untrustworthy et cetera, et cetera and on and on. By now the rest of the class was jammed halfway up the steps dying to find out what was going on. Even the nosy movie manager squeezed his way through to get a better look. That’s when I started to break up—I mean, seeing his bald head sticking up from the middle of all those kids really cracked me up. I tried to cover the giggles by pretending to have a coughing fit, which probably made it sound even worse. Of course everyone turned to stare at me, and of course that really finished me off. And what, may I ask, is so amusing? says Mrs. Serrada in snake spit. Tell us, Victoria, so that we all may enjoy the joke.

Naturally there’s nothing funny, but I can’t tell her that because I’m laughing too hard. It’s so embarrassing. But I can’t help it. These laughing fits happen to me at the worst possible times, and once I start I can’t stop. Sometimes it happens to me at the dinner table, and it’s really awful. Some stupid thing (it can even be really serious or sad) will strike me as funny, and I start to laugh. It doesn’t last too long if nobody pays any attention, but if someone, like my dad, tells me to stop, I’m dead. I become hysterical, and of course he becomes furious because he thinks I’m laughing at him, and he’ll invariably send me to my room until I can control myself. You’d think by now they’d understand that it doesn’t mean anything and just leave me alone to get over it by myself.

Like with the trouble at school. Sure, I know it was a dumb thing to do, but mostly it was just silly and nobody got hurt and Fatso shouldn’t have suspended me. Big deal, so I got hysterical. I would have apologized later. I mean, it wasn’t so terrible that she had to suspend me. And naturally that brought the smoke rising from my mother’s hair when they told her about it later.

Anyway, I wasn’t too scared in the theater. In fact it was all pretty exciting—you know, all of us in it together. Some of the other kids who weren’t involved felt sort of left out, and everybody was coming up to us and wanting to know what happened and all that. By the time we got back to class, the story was all over the school, and what a story it turned into! One version had Nickie Rostivo dangling from the balcony by one hand and all the rest of us smoking, and not plain old cigarettes either, and making out like crazy. Since I was the only one who got suspended, naturally I was the star. Actually it was kind of fun being a celebrity.

Until I got home. You know, it’s a funny thing, but I actually thought my mother might, just once, be on my side a little. After all I’m the one who really got it the worst and I didn’t do anything that much different from the others. I don’t think it was fair to take it all out on me and I told her so, really and truly expecting her to agree. Hah! What a pipe dream. She was furious with me. What does she care what’s fair or unfair? All she wanted to know was whether I thought sneaking up to that balcony was right or wrong. I said of course I knew it was wrong. Then, she said, why did you do it? How come she can’t understand that it’s not that simple? Doesn’t she remember what it’s like when all your friends are involved in something stupid, not really terrible, just a little nutty and a lot of fun? What does she want me to do—say no like some goody-goody? I was dumb to expect any sympathy from her. Still, the worst I thought would happen was that I’d be grounded for a couple of days like everyone else. But not my mother. She had to treat me like some kind of silly five-year-old. First she tells me that I can’t watch TV or have any sleepovers for the next month. I don’t like that, but it’s not the end of the world. Then she says, get this, I’m not allowed to talk on the phone for a whole week. Furthermore, when anyone calls she’s going to tell them that I can’t come to the phone because I’m being punished. Is that the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever heard? I’m never going to be able to face anyone ever again. But she doesn’t care. She’d probably like it if I stayed right here in my bedroom, sitting on my stupid canopied bed, until it was time for college.

Wouldn’t you know it, the phone’s ringing right now. I’ll bet it’s for me. Naturally my mother has to answer on the hall extension right outside my room. She wants to make sure I hear her. Oh, God! It’s Michael Langer, a really nice guy from high school, and she’s telling him how I can’t come to the phone because I’m being punished. How could she? I’m steaming mad, and as soon as I hear her hang up, I stamp my foot really hard and scream, I hate you!

The first time I told her that I was very little and she got terrifically upset. Her eyes were all watery and she took me on her lap and we talked for a long time until I finally told her that I really loved her. Since then she’s read that all children feel like that sometimes and it’s healthy to let them say it.

Now she comes stumping toward my room, saying, You just listen to me! She’s angry and just pushes the door open without even knocking. You’re behaving like a four-year-old.

And we start our usual argument. That’s the way you treat me, I say, and she tells me that’s because I act like one and I should realize I was wrong and accept my punishment, and it goes on that way with me saying one thing and her saying another but never really answering me. Like I say that I don’t mind being punished, but it’s embarrassing to have all my friends know about it, and she says, Well, you should have thought of that first. That’s what I mean. What kind of an answer is that? Oh, what’s the use, she doesn’t even try to understand me and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I swear I’ll never treat my daughter the way they treat me. I’ll really be able to understand her because I’ll remember how awful it was for me. I’ll never do anything to embarrass her and I’ll never make her cry. I’ll be her best friend and never lose my temper with her even if she makes mistakes like forgetting a dentist appointment or being late for dinner or getting a bad mark on a science test. I’ll just talk to her and try to understand why these things happened, and even if I can’t, I’ll never get angry with her no matter what, never yell at her and never punish her. Never. Not ever.

I can’t believe my mother was ever my age. I think she was born a mother. Or if she was ever a kid, she must have been perfect. Unless maybe things were so completely different in the olden days that kids didn’t do any thinking on their own, just did exactly what they were told. I picture my mother exactly like a girl in my class, Margie Sloan, a revolting goody-goody who wouldn’t dream of ever sneaking up to a balcony or even handing in a paper a minute late. Everyone agrees that Margie is the most boring person in the entire school, and she’s never invited to parties or even just for sleepovers. That’s probably the way my mother was. No wonder we can’t get along. We’re just not the same type.

There’s another thing that really bugs me about my mother. The way she talks. If I have to raise my voice one more time I’m going to blah blah blah. Or, How dare you? … Who do you think you are? and If I ever catch you doing that again blah blah blah, and so on. She has about ten of these beauties and they never change. She always sounds like a mother, an angry mother. God, I hope I don’t grow up to be like her. And I really despise it when everybody compares me to her. Oh, you’re the perfect image of your mother. Naturally it’s always one of my mother’s friends who says it. If one of my friends said it I’d kick her in the shin.

The worst part about it is that it’s sort of true. We do have the same kind of pushed-up nose and the same color eyes and supposedly we have the same smile though I really don’t see that at all. Actually I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I looked like her when I grow up because she’s pretty all right looking. But that’s it. I mean, I absolutely don’t want to be like her in any way.

Boy, did I get stuck when you consider some of the great mothers around. Like my friend Steffi’s mother. Now she’s absolutely brilliant. I feel like I can say anything at all to her because she’s such an understanding person. And she’s fun, too. When Steffi and I ice-skate at the Wollman Rink, I actually don’t mind if her mother comes along. I wouldn’t hate being her daughter at all. In fact, I’d love it. Beats me why Steffi says she can’t stand her.

The phone’s ringing again. More embarrassment. Then I hear my mother say, Oh, hello Mr. Davis. It’s going to be worse than embarrassing because there’s only one Mr. Davis I know and that’s the new principal at school. He’s only been there six months but already nobody can stand him. I think the phone call’s going to be a disaster.

Uh-huh … uh-huh … uh-huh. That’s my mother. He’s probably saying a whole lot of vicious, awful things about me and she’s agreeing. Even if they’re not out-and-out lies, they’re certainly horrendous exaggerations because he absolutely hates me. I mean a hundred people can be doing something wrong and he’ll only pick me out. He really has it in for me. I’m not saying he’s one hundred percent wrong or that I should get medals for them, but they’re