Musings for a Sunday Morning

This morning I was reading a woman's assessment of her mother—well, to be fair, an assessment of one aspect of her mother. The discussion was on how her mother frequently would wake up to random strangers strewn throughout her house, and, while she'd smile politely during introductions, she would then take her daughter to the bedroom and yell, "Dirtbag Mike?! I have to wake up to Dirtbag Mike!?"

This gave me pause for thought. I'm not sure my mother ever woke up to a litany of people including Dirtbag Mike, but I know how she would have reacted. Rather than yelling about waking up to Dirtbag Mike, Mumsy would have reached for the skillet and simply asked how he likes his eggs. While I don't believe we ever had this take place I'm pretty positive that's how she should have reacted (my dad, on the other hand, probably would have been hollering about Dirtbag Mike). How can I be so certain? Well, simply put, Mumsy was, herself, responsible for all sorts of things getting dragged into our home, car, lives. For example, I went camping for a week, and upon my return learned of the two random German women who had stayed at our house for a couple of nights. Not just in our house, no, in my bed. Other times we would be driving and she would see random high school students who were, shall we say, 'more alternative looking' than the usual small town high schoolers (she always assumed they were Wolf's friends, and sometimes they were). Pulling over to offer them rides I can still hear her asking the important question before letting them into our car, "You don't have any drugs or weapons on you, do you?" I don't think any of them ever answered 'yes'. Like they would have. She even went so far as to pick up hitchhiking hippies. I remember that one fondly, they smelled deeply of weed, patchouli, and body odor. When they offered us jerked seaweed she thanked them sweetly and turned down the gift. I'm forever thankful that was a warm day, for the windows were down the duration of their ride, as well as the next 30 miles.

Honestly, I can hardly wait until I'm married and can start bringing home random strangers—as a single woman living alone in this day and age, it's just not safe. And, while my mother may have raised a tree huggin', twigs and sticks eatin', dirty hippie, she didn't raise no fool.