Friday, August 25, 2000

Mothers say the darnedest things

Mothers say the darnedest things. My friend Michael tells a great story about traveling to San Francisco with his mom. They passed some time waiting for a table at a restaurant by examining framed pictures of the devastation left in the wake of the Great Earthquake. "Just think," his mother commented reverently. "It was all started by that cow."

Several years ago, shortly after I moved away from home to attend college, I was chatting with my mother on the phone. Our town had only recently been hooked up to cable television and mom was becoming a movie junkie. When I asked if she'd seen anything good recently, she replied, "Oh yes, last night your father and I watched Children of a Lesser Corn."

Unfortunately, I was biting my tongue so hard to keep from guffawing, I didn't have the strength to ask her about the plot. I imagine it would have made a damn fine Hollywood pitch on its own.