What goes around, comes around

Hire a teenager, while they still know it all.

That witty ditty, stamped on a black bumper sticker in gold, adorned my book cupboard in old room N-9 for the 26 years I donated my time to the California Public School system.

And although it references teenagers, it might well be said of middle agers, too.

Middle Agers, not to be confused with those who lived during the Renaissance, are those people from the ages of 35-55, those at the tops of their games, who have a robust sense of self—of their productivity, their child-rearing techniques, their gym workouts, their gardens, their philosophies, their mental acumen and so much more.

I was one of those people, just ask my sister.

There was not a topic about which I did not have a distinct and relevant (emphasis mine) opinion to offer or suggestion to make.

The person and one might say victim, who in most cases was the proud recipient of my sagacity, was my mother, Joan.

I had begun this habit of knowing just about everything before I reached middle age. As early as I could mouth the ABC’s, I was training dogs, my little brother, and telling total strangers which apples at the Glenmoor Grocery Store were worthy of purchase.

This SAS ( Self Aggrandizing Syndrome) reached its peak when I reached mine: at about 55 years of age and it’s been downhill since then.

At that time, my mother Joan—then disabled physically from her horrible bout with bacterial meningitis—traveled to and from Arizona during the winter months to escape the many grey days in Sacramento, California.

Hizzoner and I traveled most Januarys to stay with her for about a week.

It was during these short visits that I observed a number of idiosyncrasies my mother had developed while living alone in a deaf world.

She had begun to save newspaper clippings of coupons.

She had begun to freeze small left-overs from her meal preparation in tiny ZipLock bags. Her freezer was full of these mini delicacies just waiting—sometimes for years—to be thawed out and put atop a rice bowl.

She had begun to buy workout accessories—dumb bells of every weight, stretch straps, resistance bands, booklets and the like which would firm up her thighs, provide enough balance for her to audition for Cirque de Solei, and enable her to finally do the splits.

Worst of all, was what Hizzoner and I would find in her Arizona garage—thousands of plastic bags from her grocery shopping trips. Thousands.

On one of our trips, after driving her across town to a Walgreen’s store so that she could redeem a 60- cent coupon for the purchase of three Dove Liquid Moisturizing bottles, I asked her why she saved plastic bags.

“Why not?” she answered, matter-of-factly.

My SAS activated.

“Don’t you have enough plastic bags for a rainy day?” I asked, following up her line of thinking like a plaintiff’s attorney.

“One can never have enough left-overs stored for a rainy day, Dove soap, or Safeway plastic bags,” she retorted.

This past week, here at our house in Arizona, we began cleaning out cupboards. Hizzoner took extra Cuisenart carafes, frames, old clothes, and the like to the local Good Will store.

He also started a pile of things to dump.

Imagine my annoyance when I found my hundred plastic bags in that pile!

Those plastic bags are back in their round homes, hanging in the garage.

Mother, I am sorry for all of the teasing throughout the years!