If You Give a Mom a Question

(The following is a dramatization. Names, toys, or situations may have been changed to protect the attention-deficit levels of mothers, or to make you laugh. You decide.)

If you give a mom a question, she's going to want to answer it.

If you ask her where the Magnetix are, even though she was about to go exercise, she will stop what she's doing and tear apart your older sisters' closet looking for those blasted Magnetix, not because she's that good a mommy, but because it's driving her crazy that they aren't in there. Soon, she will realize that not only did she forget to start exercising, but she's halfway through cleaning the closet, which was not on today's schedule. And she still has not found the Magnetix.

She will leave the semi-tidied closet in your sisters' room and try another closet. With a triumphant, "Ah-ha!" she will pull the Magnetix from the second closet, hand them to you, bid you adieu, and race off to squeeze in a now-abbreviated workout session.

While she's exercising, she'll realize she has no idea what she's going to make for dinner. This will not please her. She will finish the workout and then wonder, "Now, what was I going to do next?" You will ask her, "Mommy, have you showered yet?" Her face will light up, and she will race off to shower.

When she's finished showering, and looking over your sisters' math stuff, you will ask her what's for lunch.

"Lunch?" she'll say, as if you'd just asked her to explain the intricacies of molecular physics. "I don't know. We'll have something. Soon."

Soon, she will go make something, and you'll eat it for lunch. This will get her wondering what's for dinner again. She'll ask everyone what sounds good, and then will announce that hamburgers are on the menu.

Then, you'll ask her if you can have a turn on the computer, and she'll say, "Yes, you can, just as soon as I finish checking this one thing." She'll sit down at the computer, and one click will lead to another, and before she knows it, she's read four blogs and she's forgotten what the one thing was. This will remind her that her youngest child is waiting for the computer, and that the hamburger is frozen.

She will send your big sister to get hamburger out of the freezer. She will stop at her planner to make a note on her shopping list, and will suddenly notice a blank thank-you note, prompting her to announce that no one has written a thank you note to Grandma and Grandpa yet. "We are writing a thank you note, now!" she says in her I'm-not-kidding voice. "Where's Anne?"

"She's getting hamburger out of the freezer," someone will say.

"Oh," says your mother. "I forgot."

Hamburger now thawing, she sits everyone down at the table, commanding that they be grateful. Your sister asks, "Are we sending Grandpa's sunglasses back, too?" Your mother jumps, and she exits the scene to go find a box in the garage. While she's rummaging through junk in the garage, she notices that the garage needs a bit of tidying up ... but her plans are interrupted by a call from the kitchen:

"Mom? How do you spell fabulous?"

"Fabulous? Well, you should look it up! Let me go find the dictionary."

And she'll be off to find the dictionary, which is on a shelf that needs to be tidied, and ...

Do you ever have this kind of day?

If you want one, just ask a mom a question.

(This post first ran in September, 2008).