My Mom

I have always thought that my mom was a very strange and funny individual. Sometimes I tell her jokes and she stones at me and does not get it at all, and sometimes I say something exceedingly lame and she can laugh for a straight five minutes without stopping.

The lame jokes went something like that:

"One day, a man went to visit the dentist. He told the dentist that a particular tooth of his had hurt him for quite a while and hence wanted it to be removed. Opening his mouth, he pointed at the aching tooth to show the dentist. The dentist nodded and applied anesthetic on the man's gum. For the next fifteen minutes, the man heard a lot of crunching sound in his mouth and wondered if that tooth was really that huge. When the sounds finally ended, the man got up to check himself in a small mirror..."

"And then?" my mom asked with bated breath.

"And then he realized with horror that he had no teeth left at all! The dentist removed everything!"

"He had no teeth left?!?!" My mom asked with a note of great surprise.

"Yep! He became a bo-geh!! His mouth was like shrunken and he looked like a granny."

My mom then took one look at me and collapsed into peels of laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed so hard that tears were running down her face while I stood there completely bewildered- was my joke that funny? While laughing, she may stop a second or two to catch her breath, and then collapse into another fit of gasping laughter.

"What was so funny?" I asked, amused.

"I imagined that happening to you," she panted, the sides of her mouth lifting, "and that was so funny! Ha ha ha ha!"

My mom got another strange and annoying habit of talking to people when they are in the toilet, especially when they are bathing. And by they, I actually refer to me, myself. When you are in the toilet under the shower, washing the shampoo out of your hair, you will hear incoherent mumbling from outside the toilet door, and that is my mom trying to tell me something. I have told her countless times not to do that because it is so irritating for I cannot hear her against the roar of running water and the barrier of the toilet door, she just refuses to pay any heed.

Sometimes she would mumble so much that I would yell, "WHAT?" to her in annoyance, and I would suffer when all the soap and shampoo enter my mouth. Other times, being the impatient little woman my mom is, she would hammer on the bathroom door until I turn off the tap, unlock the door, just to hear her complain that I didn't turn off the lights when I use the toilet.

I mean, all these things could wait till I get out of the toilet right? Why do you have to tell me that now? It is just s bad habit of my mom and she has been doing this all these years.

I remember once, when I was showering, she started mumbling outside my door again and I tried to ignore her, thinking that she would go away if she knows that I can't hear anything.

But I was wrong.

She tried to speak in increasing volume outside my toilet door and when that didn't get her any response from me, she tried to crash the toilet door down. So in the end I had no choice but to turn off the shower, shiver and open the door for her to say whatever she wanted, and then shiver my way back into shower.

My mom is also an extremely untidy and lazy fellow who detests cleaning of any kind and would rather have the house rot in filth then to lift a finger to clean it. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but it won't be funny unless I exaggerate right?

For one, she loves reading the newspaper. Once she starts reading the newspaper, she cannot stop. It is like she is living in her own world of newspaper. And the most annoying habit of hers when reading the newspaper is that she has to keep talking and talking about the contents of the paper while she is reading it. It is very distracting for me especially before the exams because my mom expects me to reply her while she narrates the events of the day.

It would go something like this:

Mom: HAHA THIS GUY IS 120kg!!!!
Me: *makes a non-identifiable sound to show that I have heard*
Mom:  Can you believe it? I hope you don't become 120kg someday!
Me: Mmmmmmhpppppp.....
Mom: Did you hear me? You better not be so overweight. You should start jogging soon.
Me: *grunts*
Mom: Omy Obama won the election!
Me: *grunts grunts grunts*
Mom: Did you hear me? He won hahahahahah!
Me: What does it matter to you? Whether it is Obama or not doesn't make a difference to you right?
Mom: How can you be so indifferent? And you are so mean! Always don't reply me de.
Me: You too mom, you too.

The bad thing about my mom and newspaper is that you can find newspaper that are a month old next to her bed and she refuses to let anyone throw them away when she doesn't do it herself. Her bedside is strewn with newspapers and clippings (usually health-related) and whenever she gets a new paper, she will just add it to the growing pile.

Sometimes I really have to put my foot down and dump her whole stash of yellowing newspapers, and she would be crying shrilly after me, "DON'T THROW THE TOP ONE! I JUST BOUGHT THAT THIS MORNING!!!"

*end of part 1*
*part 2 pending*