So far I have received approximately 3 calls every day about my impending trip to the West Coast. There's never any new information, my parents just try to convince me that their plan is better than my plan.

an email from my dad:

Please have uncle C-- pick you up and send you to D--'s place. Have you
think about stay with M-- instead? I think he lives in one or two
bed rooms apartment. It is better for you as a single girl. Sorry I am old
fashion. The shuttle bus usually will only drop you at certain spots. It is
too dangerous to walk at night. Do not assume that nothing will happen to
you. A 4th year student from College of Medicine of Philadelphia was raped
and killed in Winnfield Height near Overbrook last weekend. She was an
Korean, last seen jogging at 4 PM last Friday near the creek. She was a 2nd
lieutenant in the Army reserve.

my friend's mom

C sends in this chat transcript with her mom. I especially like the "get the message" at the end :)

mom: bank one check bounce?
me: it bounced due to my mistake
me: i miscalculated how much money was in my account
me: but i sent another (good) check
me: as soon as i realized it happened
mom: but would they put a bad mark on your credit report
mom: you should protest right away.
mom: saying they were wrong and that is not fair on top of it they charge bad check fee and put a dent on your report. you have to protest
me: yes, i know
me: except they were right
me: and it did bounce
mom: protest anyway to make them remove it
me: remove what?
mom: otherwise, tell them you are cancellling the creditr card
me: what do you want me to do, lie?
me: well i'm going to cancel it anyway
mom: remove bad check record and fee
mom: I want you to keep good credit report
me: mom, stop scaring me
me: there's nothing i can do about it
me: they didn't falsely charge or accuse me
me: because the check really did bounce
mom: yes, you can protest
me: how am i supposed to protest?!?
mom: protest anyway it is clerical error
mom: and you immediately send another check
me: yeah but it wasn't a clerical error
mom: talk to you later- if you don't care bad credit report do nothing else protest and hinting you will forget their credit card
me: it really did bounce
me: i do care about my credit
me: but it was my own mistake
mom: get the message bye

emails from non-moms

So sometimes it's not only your mom that's crazy. My friend's aunt sent this email to him. She definitely should be hired to write virus email.

To: Dan
Subject: Re: is this the right email address?

Yes, this is a right email,
We will send you a pictures with the monkey
Irene

So I think this will be a collection of current events with my mom, anecdotes from the past with my mom, and stories from my friends with wacko parents.

old anecdote

My mom was always really paranoid about men. She never trusted any of them. Not even my dad, really. In sixth grade, I really wanted to go to the first middle school dance. We ended up just having a really long fight about it, where she told me that if I went, the eighth-grade boys would rape me.

Keep in mind that she never really had the sex talk with me even. But she made me sit there until I proved that I had learned about the dangers of sex in the 5th grade video they showed us at school.

She's long forgotten about this. I brought it up once, and she said, "I never said that! Well I let you go to other dances, didn't I? Why are you holding this one thing against me?"

Oh right, so during this phone call I can't stand it anymore and I finally say "Bye" and hang up. She calls me back right away, and it goes something like this:

"I don't understand how you think about these things. You need to call me back and explain right now. There are a lot of things you don't understand."

Two minutes later, the phone rings again.

"Okay, you need to call me back right now. If you still think of me as your mother, call me back right now."

So I'm moving to California from Boston. When you (or rather, I) move across the country, I don't want to take anything unnecessary with me. Printer? Hardly used. Don't need it. Scanner? Same thing, and besides, it sucks. Air filter? Love it, but it's noisy. Do I want to ship them to myself there? No, I don't think so.

I tell my mom this, and she is personally offended by every little thing. "What do you mean you don't want to take the printer! It costs $400 new! I'll mail it to you!" But what if I don't want the thing in my apartment? Not relevant I suppose. I know what she does with stuff she says she'll hold on to -- she stores it in her basement. Forever. Seriously. She doesn't believe in throwing anything away, since at one point it cost something. Or selling it, because at one point it was worth more.

Her latest email to me:
I know that you are smart and doing things well-planned. But the idea to move to California is so rough and unplanned. Did you have some arguments with Matt?

You have been living in the east coast. I understand that you want some changes. We support your idea to live in California for one or two years. But I do not support your idea to look for jobs only in California. In California, the unemployment rate is high. You should also look for jobs in
Boston too in case there is no job available in CA. At least you know your current value is after four year college and one year graduate school. As long as you have one job offer, you have bargain chip to deal with other offers. As long as you do not buy a house, you won't have too many furniture to move. Even you bought a house, you can still move to California. Just like us, we bought a house and lived in California for four years and then we moved to Philadelphia.

You probably won't believe that in the computer store, we did not have our own scanner. If you do not want the cheap scanner, we can use in the store. All the money we gave you so far are the money we have earned and saved all those years. All the things we gave you are the stuff we can afford. We might not give you the best things as other parents did. You probably recalled that we only had family vacation once a year. We never had fancy vacation. This was how we saved all the money. We did not want you to have large loan burden as Emmy (Howard's wife) did when you graduated.

Since you were away from home, we always tried to give you more cash every time we saw you to make sure that you always have money on hand. This was the way to show our care and love. If you did not need those money, you could save the money. Both dad and I still have jobs now. Therefore we have enough money to support both you and pei-pei. If someday we lose jobs, we may not be able to support you. This is why we want you to find permanent job, not temporary job.

The reason we wanted to you to go to MIT instead of Penn state which we did not have to pay tuition is to give you the opportunity to get better education and get better job. We want both you and pei-pei to have a nice job, nice family and comfortable living in the future.

You probably thought that we need two cars. You are afraid to take one car. Actually, we only need one car. Only when you or pei-pei at home, we will need two cars. This was why we offered to give you car several times last fall and this year.


Love,
mom

Why does it always have to be about her? I don't want to take the car because I don't want the damn car, not because I'm afraid she'll be without one. I know full well they'll just buy another.

I especially like the part about how going to MIT ensures me of a "nice family".

Ok that's it. I can't take it anymore. My mom is crazy, and here is my blog about her.