Get Thee to the Smithy!

I'm so pissed off at needing to re-install my parent's computer for the fifth time that I just continue to work when my mom arrives. As soon as she walks in the door she starts her complaining--About her trip, about the fleas on her trip, about my second cousin cindy who weighs 450 lbs, about the deplorable conditions in Savanna, about the house not being clean, etc. As you might have guessed I thought the computer would be a better companion at that time than my mother. My mom yells down at me, "Are you hiding down there?" I just lied back, "No Mother, I'm working on fixing the computer. I'll be up when I'm finished." Well, I didn't finish until it was around 2am and by that time she was asleep. Now, I kept my promise and did go upstairs when I was done but no one was around to greet me. My mother has taken over the bed that I usually sleep in when I visit with tons of junk that she has started collecting. I'm forced to make my own type of bed in the basement by laying an extra mattress in the corner on the floor and riffling through the house at two in the morning looking for sheets and pillows.

The next thing I know it's five in the morning and my mom and dad are up. I can hear my mom complaining some more about my second cousin cindy and about the homosexual couple that was moving into the house next to my great aunt Chris' house that my mother met while down in Georgia. I'm exhausted and try to sleep some more but end up getting out of my makeshift bed around 6:30am. By this time my dad has left for work and so it's just my mom upstairs. I brave the flight of stairs and emerge onto the first floor. I already have my night bag packed and I head straight for the door past my mother to my car. Before I make it out the door my mom asks, "Sneaking out of the house, huh?" To which I instantly change my plans and say, "No mother, I'm just putting my bag in my car so I don't forget it when I do leave."Returning back into the house, I head for the bathroom and wash my face and put some water on my hair to brush it. My mom walks to the bathroom door--which is open--and tells me that we need to talk. I try to be jovial and respond, "O.K., what do you want to know?" I walk out of the bathroom and sit on the living room couch and then my mother starts in on me. Some major points of note are: she can't help it God said homos are an abomination; I'm not biblically based enough in my theology, therefore I should stop preaching (she misquotes Amos 8:11-12 as evidence of the lack of biblical teaching in churches and says I should not add to the famine); despite my lack of biblical worth, I have the calmest spirit of God contained within me she has ever seen; and best of all, she still loves me no matter what path I take, satanic or otherwise. After she gets that off of her chest she starts talking about the other problems in her life and again I fill the role of the eldest child, the one who fixes the family problems...grrrr.

After our talk, my mother begins to show me what she has brought back from Georgia. The first thing she shows me is a super-little chow type dog she has named Prosperity. She reasons that when she calls the dog--"Come here Prosperity"--she will be enacting Proverbs 18:21--though she didn't make the actual reference only saying, "By our tongue we bring about our blessings and cursing"--and "creating" or bringing life into the prosperity of her life (she also misquoted the verse and it took me half an hour to find what she was talking about). I didn't have the heart to tell her those types of dogs are all the rage in the gay community. She now has a gay person's dog named Prosperity. She also presented me with a pre-birthday present. Because of Ephes. 6:10-18 she has given me a double edged sword. This is not some toy sword but an honest to goodness double edged sword. She actually got three of them. A broad sword, a double edged sword, and a regular sword (with only one edge). My dad gets the broad sword and my brother gets the regular sword (when he gets out of prison) because of our age. She also made a reference to the trinity but that fell apart when she got to my brother's sword though she went with it anyway and called my brother a spirit. Seeing as she just told me a hour or so before about my lack of proficiency in the "sword of the Spirit" I thought it fitting to have received a sword from my mother. Soon after I received my sword and showed my mother the new fish in the pond, I left for McCormick.

Not even looking back, I recalled--as I always do when I visit that nut house--exactly why I left at the age of 18 for college and have never returned but for short visits.