great gifts for 12 year old boyfriend?

I was an awful daughter.

You know what my mother would do though, that to this day I can't figure out what possessed her to handle the situation this way?

Occassionally I would get to school and realize I'd forgotten to take my lunch. Whenever that happened, I would internally die, because I knew what would happen.

Whenever other kids forgot their lunch, you'd see their mothers show up sometime during the morning, and watch her walk over to the door of the school, like a sane person, and presumably, once she stepped inside, go over to the office and leave the lunch bag. Everyone knew everyones mother, and you'd obviously see your own mother pulling up close to the door and going in, so you knew to go over there to get your lunch at lunch time.

Not my mother.

Instead of pulling up to the school door, and walking 15 feet into the building, and another 15 feet to the office, she'd park at the far end of the playground, and march across the playground, up onto the grass around the building, storm up to the classroom she knew you were in, and start banging on the outside window. Even if all the windows were open, because it was April or May. She had to bang like no one noticied this woman that looked like a Shelly Winters in the Poseidon Adventure approaching the school.
The nun would have to go over, and pull up the blinds, pull up the screen, so my mother could shove a paper bag with a tuna fish sandwich in it to her, and tell her "THIS IS FOR CHAI TEA! SHE FORGOT HER LUNCH! IS THIS HER CLASSROOM?"

Sometimes she didn't always get the right classroom the first time.

I begged her once not to do that, and she asked me if I was ashamed of her, and that she didn't have time to go all the way into the school and to the office.

and some people have wondered why i never wanted children.

You probably would have made a great mother, Chai, based on your mom... you would have been rational and done the opposite.

My mom never did that because she couldn't have cared less if we had our lunches We call her a "nasty bag of goods".

My mom was a terrible cook and I really couldn't eat her food. We were all starving, so everyone else would eat it (reluctantly), but it was so horrible that I couldn't. I would have snacks at friends' houses on the way home because I knew what dinner would be. At dinnertime, after everyone else had finished, she'd make me sit there for hours and then finally put my plate in the fridge with wax paper on top. I'd get that for every meal until it dried up. Today I'm a good cook (possibly because of her) and I've never made my kids eat stuff they didn't like. Try it, for sure, but don't like it? No problem!

I remember you telling a story where your dad (or was it the kids?) would put everything in the refrigerator into one pot and serve that for supper.

You were listing what went in the pot and it was really gross.

So, seriously, what kind of stuff did your mother make?

My mother wasn't good either, but not that bad. I was amazed when I started cooking myself and saw how easy it was.

My mother fried liver a lot because it was so cheap. And she'd fry fish. She'd fry them so long they were totally dried out and nearly impossible to eat. She would just mix any old thing with other any old things and there were never any spices or herbs. Bland. Overcooked. Disgusting combinations. Baloney, tuna, peas and macaroni. Her soups were greasy. Tomato sandwiches for lunch - you know how those turn out. She burnt a lot of food - hamburgers, for example. We got puffed wheat and lumpy, warm powdered milk for breakfast every day. Every single day. Who can tolerate that? She was just a dreadful, indifferent cook. I started babysitting at age 9 so I could buy school lunches (milk and hot dogs in those days).

We'd buy 8 oranges for $1 and since there were 7 of us, one was leftover. It always went missing, of course, with 7 hungry kids, and she'd hold an inquisition to find the culprit. We all had to sit around the dining table until the guilty party owned up. She did that all the time.

My job was the dishes and the floors and my sisters would pay me to dump their powdered milk down the sink I would literally gag if I tried to drink it. Warm water with yellow-y lumps of powder floating on the top. It's too gross to even think about.

Fortunately, my older sister started doing the cooking when she was about 12. Food got a lot better for a while, then she became a vegetarian (good way to get out of eating liver) and it got boring again, but at least it was edible. She made a great pizza.

What was she going to do with the 8th orange?



I can totally envision it. The sitting around the table until someone confessed to eating the extra orange.

Maybe use the orange as a reward? God only knows what went on in that woman's head.

Well, if nothing else, our 12 year old poster has hopefully learned that she better be a decent mom or her kids are going to write very funny, sad things about her when they grow up.

Yes, there's always that.

And I walked both ways - up hill.

In that case, I suggest soup.

Maybe she could get him something from the bakery.

They knead the dough.

That's hard to do, so hat's off to you, m'dear. Did you have boots on?

Damn. Sounds like the Cain Mutiny and the missing strawberries.

oh god, it does, doesn't it.



pilfering of strawberries.

LOL

I can tell roger hit the nail on the head, huh?

You know I had to go look, I could have shown they did a remake of the Caine Mutiny with Denzel Washington. I guess it was just my imagination.

But wouldn't Washington make a perfect Capt. Queeg?

chocolates and fresh flowers

Yes, boys love getting flowers.

Considering the symbolism involved with flowers.... maybe not.