We're teaching my mom to say "asshole"

October 06, 2005 - 9:57 a.m.

This is about my mother, holy cow! Where did that come from?? It isn’t even her birthday or Mother’s Day or anything! I’ve hardly seen my mama for months, or this whole year even, except for the major holidays. So maybe I’m getting sentimental.

The funniest thing about my mom is that she has nicknames for everyone and LAWD KNOWS I love a nickname.

Scenario: Me visiting my parents, with a friend along for the ride.

Dad, hollering from the basement up to the kitchen: Woman, I thought you were fixing me some clam chowder?

Mom: Oh, Richard!

Friend, shifting uncomfortably on the couch, whispers: I thought your dad’s name was Eugene?

Me, knowing that the answer will soon be revealed: silence.

Dad: Where’s my clam chowder? And applesauce!

Mom: Oh, stop being a Richard Cranium!

Friend, hissing: Richard what? Why does she keep calling him Richard?

Mom heads back to the kitchen to nuke some clam chowder.

Me: Because my mom doesn’t believe in swearing so she has code words. Richard = dick. Cranium = head. DICK. HEAD. “Dear, stop being a DICK HEAD.”

Friend: HA HA HA HA - NO WAY!

Yes way. That lady is a class act. But it’s not like I have a “cool” mom. She’s totally a June Cleaver, which is why her antics are so funny. She’s 61 years old and wears elastic pants and jingle bell socks, for godssake. She has some kind of autopilot and she NEVER swears with real swear words.

Here’s Mama’s Profanity Vocabulary:

“Good night!” = Jesus Christ!.

“Heavens!” = Hell no!

“Who let a breezer?” = Fart.

“You stinker.” = You shithead.

“Gosh Dang it!” = Goddamn it.

“Fricken Fraken Farken!” = FUCK FUCK FUCK.

“He’s a rectal you-know-what.” = He’s an ass fuck.

“She’s a bit of a Harlet” or “Hussy” = Whore.

“She brought her friends Si-fy-las and Gon-or-ea” = She brought her friends Syphilis and Gonorrhea, because she’s a whore.

“Well you know, the kind of man who likes to keep gerbils?” = You know, a FAGGOT?

And my personal favorite, when she’s really pissed, she’ll say, “Hey jerk! Read between the lines!” And she’ll be shaking her fist at you, holding up her three middle fingers like this:

And then she’ll guffaw and stomp away. The crazy woman cannot even bring herself to extend her middle finger to the world.

You see, she’s dirty inside. She’s warped and perverted inside and every thing about me that is profane, corrupt, sick and humorous, I learned from her. She’s an Irish Catholic, I think that explains it all. But she got saved before I was born and now she’s a Baptist and she’s been suppressing her inner deviant, but she just finds more creative ways to be dirty, so she can still go to heaven.

Even though she is not racist (honestly, she loves all of god’s children, red, yellow, black & white) she still picked up plenty of Nig Talk in her youth, thanks to all of the adults in her life being drunk all the time. Sometimes she uses the Nig word, but when she does it’s so adorable you just want to coax her to say it more.

When setting out snack foods for me when I visit, she’ll push a bowl of mixed nuts toward me and say, “Here, dear. Have some nigger toes.” But then she’ll turn bright red and snort and look at the floor because she knows she was bad. And if there’s one thing you can learn from Irish forebears (other than calling Brazil Nuts “Nigger Toes”), it’s that you should always whisper the Nig word, and then you won’t be a racists. People that say it aloud are the real racists, not us.

“HERE DEAR, HAVE SOME nigger toes.”

“THANKS FOR WASHING THOSE WINDOWS HON, THEY SHINE LIKE A nigger’s heel!”

“WHAT IS THAT NOISE? IT SOUNDS LIKE jungle bunny MUSIC COMING FROM THE STEREO!”

Now, I don’t want you to think that she uses these words chronically. She says things like this maybe 4 times a year, but multiply that by 30 years of my life, and it’s no surprise that I fall asleep on Christmas Eve with visions of nigger toes, dancing in my head.

I can’t wait to become a mom, because then I can stop swearing and start speaking sheer lunacy instead, to entertain my children, so that they can tell all of their friends that I’m a fucking loon.

She mispronounces words all the time, to spice up her life, or pronounces things phonetically.

“Dinner is in the frig.”

Frig, pronounced with a hard “g”.

“The lady had little tiny breasteses.”

Breast-es-es.

There is much talk about boobs and butts, because she’s been a radiologist for 40 years, starting in general radiology, where she would discover foreign objects stuck in people’s butts, and then moving into mammography, where we hear all about pancake breasts, Down Syndrome breasts, obese breasts.

She always speaks in a hush. “Today we had a public aid patient. You know…a retarded woman? And oh my stars. She never had a Mam before and she was 47 years old. She got VERY. Upset when we told her that we needed her to lie down in the parking lot and we were going to run over her breasts with an SUV.”

Endless stories of patients coming in complaining of constipation (always men) and then they pull something inorganic out of his butt and he’s all “I don’t know how that got there.”

“A gentleman came in and we removed a can of Aquanet hairspray from his rectum.”

Dildo in the ass of a 90 year-old man, coke bottles, hotdogs, hairbrushes, and YES, a GERBIL SKELETON! Not an urban legend, regardless if Richard Gere was involved.

Incidentally, one year my Christmas gift to her was a bottle of Aquanet, with brown crayon scribbled all over it and placed in a plastic specimen bag. She loved it.

Then there is hors d'oeuvres. Whenever she and my dad would have adult night, like having friends over for dinner and cards, she would always ask me to prepare the hors d'oeuvres, which was usually lunch meat and cheese folded in fancy patterns.

Except she pronounces it like:

“Dear, would you mind setting out the Whores Divorse for our guests?”

Or sometimes it’s:

“Would you care for a Whores Devereaux?”

Do you see why I’m so excited to be able to talk this way one day??

If I talked this way now, there’s a chance that no one would marry my ass, but once you become a mom you can say whatever the hell you want and your family will think it’s endearing, and not recognize it for the schizophrenia that it really is.

And then there’s “Frub” and no one has any idea the etymology of this word.

“Frub” is basically snuggly, huggy, precious, adorable and only applies to innocent children. It usually involves reaching out and grabbing the child, or if it is in reference to a child who is not present, then arms will reach out into thin air and pretend to squeeze chubby cheeks.

Frub as a noun: “Oh, there’s a frub at the table behind you!”

Frub plural: “I told her not to bother with a babysitter, bring your frubbers to our house!”

Frub as an adjective: “Will you look at his frub face?”

Frub as a verb: “Come over here so I can frub your ears.”

My mama liked to rub my ears. She still rubs my brother’s ears and he’s 36. Her favorite kind of frubbing is squeezing cheeks, but we all had skinny faces so she rubbed our ears instead.

Other nonsensical talk includes abbreviations for things that are dirty but can be discussed freely under the guise of x.x.x.

Me: Oh no! I’m late for school and I don’t have time to take a shower!

Mom: Just take a PTA bath, dear.

Me: A what?

Mom, whispering: Pits, tits and ass, dear. That’s all that matters.

You’re right mama, that is all that matters. Wise words to live by, even to this day. I wonder if my boyfriend knows I only wash my PTA.

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