As you get older, certain things about you start to change. I just recently started to grow a few back hairs, every time I stand up my knees try to argue with me, and if I don’t get a full 8 hours of sleep I turn into a fucking zombie. All those changes are expected to come with age, but I have also noticed another jarring phenomenon; I am slowly evolving into my mother.
My mother is the most important person in the world to me. She raised four children single-handedly and managed to do it without an ounce of ego. If I end up half the human being that she is, I will count myself lucky. Unfortunately, I seem to be taking on some of her more quirky characteristics. Here are several of the ways I am turning into my dear mother, Joyce Randall:
She always said that it didn’t matter what food tasted like because it all ends up in the same place. This was her way of circumventing our bitching when she mixed foods together to escape a fast-approaching expiration date. I think of her every time I put ice cream in my oatmeal, or Cocoa Puffs in my spaghetti.
She loves a good yard sale every Saturday morning. I always thought we were just bonding, but I guess you can bond over a good brown bag special. Nowadays, if I want a whole new wardrobe I just ask my friends of a similar size to give me their hand-me-downs. You can also bet that if there is an apartment sale on the sidewalk in soho, I am lurking somewhere in the distance, ready to snatch up a good bargain.
My mother’s default outfit was a leotard paired with green velvet stirrup leggings. I’m not going to expand on that except to say that Bryce Gruber and I had a bunch of leftover leggings from an American Apparel photo shoot, and they make an appearance almost every time I get drunk.
My mom always said that in a household, everything should have a home. This was her way of making sure the remote control returned to the coffee table after her 4 demon-children fought over it, but I never understood it until I was grown up, and had to deal with my roommate constantly stealing my lube. In my apartment every item has its home, and you will face the wrath of 1,000 homos if you dare remove one of my show towels.
My mom believes in destiny. This is probably the biggest one, but I went from being someone who doesn’t believe in anything except partying and screwing strangers, to someone who realizes that the universe has some kind of inherent plan. She calls it “The majesty of your destiny” but what she means is that at the end of it all, you realize that there was a beautiful design to everything you did. The older I get, the more I realize the wisdom in that, and it is an amazing thing to see my own design unfold.
The moral of this story is that whether or not you want to, you will eventually evolve into your mother. This can be an amazing thing if you take her positive characteristics and find a way to make them work for you. This can be a horrible thing if your mother is a 65-year-old meth-head that sleeps on a ratty old Lazy Boy in a run-down trailer in the Louisiana backwoods. Regardless of where we come from though, we are all on our own journey, and evolving into our mothers is just one more way we can keep a piece of them with us forever.
I personally plan to keep the green velvet leggings. You should probably withhold judgment until you see how great they make my ass look.
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