Please Don't Write Blogs About Me

My mom has this saying...well, actually she has 2 sayings, the first being "Please don't write blogs about me," which then induces my standard "Sorry in advance" response. Only it's never actually issued in advance of me writing a blog. So now really my mom just finishes her conversations with me by saying "Please don't write a blog about this."

Now that I think about it, that's an odd habit she's taken up, "Love you too sweetie. Don't blog about me. Bye!"

But truth be told, I don't know that my mom actually reads the blog. She just picks up on when she may have said something that I'll think is funny enough to write about. Which is everything, so perhaps is isn’t all that weird that she has standard closing remarks.

Anyway, my mom’s second saying is “Put it down.”

She used to scream it at me when I was a little kid and would pick up everything within reach. She seems to relish the opportunity to tell people about the time when I was 3, I tried to pick up raw ground beef at the grocery store. She screamed, “Jessica Leigh – put it down!” To which I replied, “Please don’t kill me Mommy!”

Cute story huh? We also lived in the mountains of North Carolina, next to a motorcycle camp at the time. Cue the banjos.

Eventually, I grew out of picking up literal stuff, but my mom’s saying didn’t fade into the sunset like some of the other famous directives, such as:

Listen here missy;

Look at me when I am speaking to you; and,

Why would you ever put cheese on the coffee table?

No, my mom still needed to say “put it down” to me because I was now picking up figurative things that weren’t mine either. She would say, “Jessica is that even your problem to deal with? Put it down.” Then she’d make a mom face and I would roll my eyes, and eventually we coined a new slogan, “Now say you’re sorry.”

So I have spent the entirety of my adult life figuratively picking up things that aren’t mine and learning how to say I’m sorry. Quite frankly, I suck at the latter. If you’ve ever gotten an apology from me, it’s a miracle, and maybe included some prodding from my mom. Ok, very likely included actual prodding from my mom.

I must think a problem to death and then rethink it over again until all logic and sense has been exhausted. Then I’ll ask your opinion on it just so I can dismiss it and go back to my original conclusion.

Quite a process right? Hence “put it down.”

And typically, somewhere in all that, I’ll say something shitty that I don’t mean in the long run, which then leads to the, “now I'm saying sorry,” and I’m apologizing for something that wasn’t even my problem.

So here, a mere 12 days into my 30's I find I have become completely unable to pick up, carry or comprehend anything that isn't mine and learned the fine art of an unprodded apology. I even broke down and cried, which happens about as often as Halley's Comet.

I'm an emotional grown-up!

My mom would be proud but I'll never be able to tell you what she says because I'm not allowed to blog about her.