Why did you send me that?

I was all fired up about this in the car today, although earlier when it happened I'd decided to let it go, on account of mom's being really sweet lately. She left me a message saying she loved me (and not asking where I could possibly be at whatever non-exotic hour); she asked me to do something for her at my convenience rather than the usual drop-everything; and she said she'd let me go, even before I insisted that I had to go, on the 4th, when I said I was at a friend's house (literally, "as a guest" or even more literally "among guests," for those of you who care; transliterally, "v gostakh.")

She did, a week or so ago, go on about how she couldn't believe there were no lakes around here to swim in the summer and how awful and isn't Massachusetts just so much better, etc., but I had let it go. In fact I almost let it go again, because I was feeling particularly ADD and between blogs opted to go online shoe shopping, and between my retail-therapy-deprivation (no clothes until I lose weight) and Gina's being online and enabling me as I sent her links to the shoes-- it was almost like shopping together in person-- I went nuts on piperlime.com and it felt great... but I still want to blog...

...and not even because of what my mom did; it wasn't new or unusual. It was almost my fault for forgetting that that's what she does-- I shouldn't have provoked her. I saw a great deal for air & hotel in Hawaii and sent it to her, thinking she'd either look into it or delete it. Because that's what people do. Of course, what my mom does is call me and ask me why I sent it to her. Now the last time she did that, she was downright accusatory and mean, and she wasn't this time. She's certainly smart enough to figure out why I'd send her a travel deal she might be interested in; she just doesn't opt to apply those smarts to the issue at hand.

[Earlier tonight, when I thought of e-mailing my friend Pauletta about the shoe sale, I almost thought she might call me and say, "why did you send me that? don't you know I'm on vacation? I just went shopping for shoes (or I'm going shopping for shoes this weekend). Is there a reason you think I need shoes?" I quickly realized she would say none of those things; she would click on the link, or ignore it and move on with her life. Then, this train of thought led me to another epiphany... mom is insistent (recall the fights where she insists that I take things and does expect justification for my not doing so), so she expects me to be as well.]

Anyway, Mom asks these kinds of questions when she watches movies as well. For as long as I can remember, years before she ever saw "Zoolander" and asked why the miner was disappointed in his son for becoming a male model, she'd ask such questions throughout a movie, in the genre of "why this?" "why that?" "why did that person get upset when his wife left him?" "why did that object fall when it was dropped out the window?"

"Why did you send me that e-mail about the trip to Hawaii?"
"Because I thought you might like to go."
"Oh, I won't have time... we're going to spend a week on the Cape..."
"You don't have to explain it to me; just delete it."
"...and then another week perhaps in Maine. I thought you knew..."
"Mom, just delete the e-mail." I wasn't going to interrogate her about it.
"When I got that, I thought maybe you were going to Hawaii."
"What? No, I'm not."

True, I've gone to Hawaii a few times in the last year or so, and I've sent her my airline itinerary for her information. I've always told her first, though, and I've never disguised that itinerary as a travel deal. There was no way that e-mail was an indicator of an upcoming trip on my part.

So back to why I didn't let this go: as in the past when my mother asks me why I've sent her something, I try to follow her logic for doing so, and that leads me to, "maybe to her I'm not just sending an e-mail, maybe she thinks I expect follow-up... but wait, she sends me SO much crap ALL the time, she can't possibly think every e-mail about a travel sale or other sale requires a good reason..." and then I get stuck on, "she sends me so much crap..." and veer off on the crap she's sent most recently.

And that's when I got angry, in a way that I don't get so much angry about, say, stupid jokes (at those, I get annoyed and move on with my life), but it's the ignorant, hateful political stuff that really irks me, because it's an indicator of the base level of discourse that consuming this country. It's not that I disagree with the political opinions (although I usually do); it's that I resent the author of whatever forwarded piece of garbage for propagating ad hominem arguments and oversimplifying complex situations. I've occasionally replied, with "this is a bunch of crap and here's why," or "could you please stop sending me this bravo sierra," but my mother isn't one to respond to my pleas, even when there are practical considerations behind them (such as "I'm in Nicaragua, internet time is rare and the connection is slow, could you PLEASE stop clogging my inbox with large forwards.") With the political stuff, she thinks she's doing me a favor, or at least educating me. I can follow (I said 'follow,' not 'appreciate') the logic that far: she's going to change my mind with informative e-mails. Well if that's her goal, she needs to find pieces that are well-written, not sophomoric, not pulled out of the rear end of someone too uninformed and insecure to engage those that disagree rather than insult them.

On that note I leave you. Peace out.