The storytellers

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story...

Here’s another updated essay from 2019 and it’s about my mom’s tendency to tell stories they way she wants to tell them and how the facts don’t matter and I’m glad I didn’t inherit this undesirable trait or they never would have given me the Nobel Peace Prize and the Medal of Honor in the same year.

Enjoy the fabrications.

Not long before I started this trip to California, I got a call from my brother Danny because our mother told him I was broke.

I don’t know if Danny was concerned about my financial status or just crossing my name off his list of potential money lenders, but either way it was nice to get a call. I assured him I was doing just fine financially and called my mom to ask why she would say I was broke.

“Because you don’t have a job.”

So I carefully explained that while I was laid-off in 2017 along with just about everybody else who worked for a newspaper, through Social Security, a pension plan and freelance work, I was doing just fine. I assured my mom that I wasn’t pushing a shopping cart containing all my worldly possessions down the street; everything was A-OK and figured correcting her misperception about my financial situation was off my Shit-To-Do List.

Think again.

Despite an explanation that came just short of charts, graphs, a PowerPoint presentation and hand puppets, the other day Danny told me my mother was once again saying I was broke.

Once more unto the fucking breach.

When I asked my mother why she was once again saying I was broke, she replied:

“Because you’ve been eating at so many restaurants.”

That’s right, mom, in the short span of 23 days in California, I have squandered my entire life savings on fish tacos. What was I thinking? Clearly, I should have put my money in a more solid investment—like chicken chimichangas.

Evidently, in what’s left of my mom’s mind, “not having a job” equals “broke” and no matter how often I try to correct her, she’s going to keep telling the story her way and a couple seconds later I figured out why.

My brother Bob was part of this conversation and had his own question:

“I retired, mom. Why do you keep saying I lost my job?”

My mom sat and thought for a second, then grinned and said:

“Because it makes a better story.”

So there you have it; my mom – the devout Christian – will tell a story the way she wants to tell it and if inconvenient facts get in the way, those inconvenient facts are going to have set of Nelda-sized tread marks up their ass.

Hell, mom, if you just want a good story, why don’t you start telling people I’m now robbing banks? And I took up that occupation after being the winning quarterback in last year’s Super Bowl and marrying Queen Latifah?

Turns out, truth is the first casualty of war and a good story.

The Miracle of the Green Lights

OK, so clearly mom likes a good story and doesn’t mind making shit up to make those stories better and armed with that information it’s time to hear about The Miracle of the Green Lights.

One night my mom was late for a Bible class and according to her, God decided to help her arrive on time by turning every stoplight green just as she approached it. Will wonders never cease?

(Yes, as a matter-of-fact, they will.)

In this version of the Almighty’s work schedule, little kids starving in Africa don’t receive God’s help because he’s got his hands full getting my mom to the church on time.

Fuck the kids; Nelda’s late.

I can’t remember the precise speed and don’t know of it’s still set up that way, but there used to be signs in downtown Sacramento alerting you to the fact that if you drove the right number of miles-an-hour and managed to hit a green light, all the lights were synchronized and—if you maintained that modest speed—would turn green as you approached and the idea was to encourage people to drive sanely and keep traffic flowing so downtown Sacramento wasn’t filled with traffic jams.

But that version of the story is kinda boring; much better to make God the main character than some smart city planner and the important message behind this miraculous tale is God likes my mom a lot and does her favors although apparently it’s a limited policy because He hasn’t done jackshit about her deteriorating vision.

Fire, Brimstone and Bullshit

My mom is a Pentecostal Christian and always looking for signs of the Apocalypse and since she’s about to turn 94, it can’t come too soon for her.

The rest of can kiss our asses goodbye because mom’s ready to go.

2025 Update: All my life I’ve been hearing my mom talk about how wonderful Heaven will be and how she’ll get to be with my dad again and being a good and thoughtful son, I said dad was married three times, why do you think you were his favorite?

Maybe he’s up there living it up with Door #2 or having a blast with Rita Hayworth and mom’s arrival will be a huge disappointment, but I don’t think dad has much to worry about because now that she’s Knock, Knock, Knocking on Heaven’s Door mom doesn’t seem all that eager to go and while she just turned 100, a woman recently died at 116, so mom could have another decade and-a-half of making up stories before boarding her flight to Paradise.

Before mom gave it up and decided to wait for the Rapture in her Barcalounger, she would prepare “lessons” for her Bible class which was attended by a few knuckleheads who thought my mom was some kind of prophet in a moo-moo and at one point she phoned me to ask if nuclear weapons contained “brimstone” which, if they did, would be incredibly convenient from her point of view. She could then tie the threat of nuclear war into the coming Apocalypse and put a nice big, Bullshit Bow on it.

To be honest, even though I’ve read about the creation of the first atomic bomb and saw Oppenheimer, I didn’t retain much information except they weren’t 100 percent sure that it wouldn’t set off a chain reaction that couldn’t be stopped and would destroy the entire world.

But they fired that bad boy off anyway.

I mean if you put a shit ton of effort into a project, you’d probably want to see if your ideas worked and let’s face it; you’ve got to break some eggs, the chicken they came from and possibly every other living thing on the planet if you want to make an omelet.

So ka-boom, and then woo-hoo – we’re all still alive. Must’ve been quite a party in Los Alamos that night and I’m guessing nine moths later we had a new crop of scientists.

Anyway…

I told my mom I knew where she was headed with her train of thought, but to my limited knowledge there’s not a whole lot of brimstone (which is basically “sulfur”) used in the production of nuclear weapons. But if she kept up her track record for inconsistent veracity and quality storytelling, I was pretty sure my inconvenient information wouldn’t stop her from saying it anyway.

And speaking of putting her own twist on things…

The Lord Will Not Give You An Unbearable Burden

When my mom decided to divorce my stepdad, the general reaction was, “Jesus, what took so long?” The dude (my stepdad, not Jesus) wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree and doubled down on that undesirable trait by being a flaming asshole.

May he rest in peace.

(And I’m talking about my family’s peace, not his.)

But even though we figured she was doing the right thing, that didn’t stop us (and by “us” I actually mean “me”) from teasing her about it:

“Mom, you’re a Christian, how can you get a divorce?

My mom responded by saying the Bible says the Lord will not give a burden you cannot bear…and then with a comedian’s timing and a big grin said:

“And I couldn’t bear him.”

2025 Update: I just looked this up and apparently the idea that the Bible says the Lord won’t give you more than you can handle is a misconception based on some wishful thinking and 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says God won’t give us temptations we can’t handle (not burdens) and I think the popularity of Pornhub disproves this notion.

I can’t handle the temptation of a half-empty carton of Rocky Road ice cream in my freezer and my mom couldn’t handle the temptation of divorcing an asshole, so all-in-all, I believe God’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

(Moving on before the bolt of lightning hit me.)

In Conclusion

So if you’re ever reading one of these stores and wonder if I’ve exaggerated for effect or left out inconvenient facts…maaaaybe, but it’s clearly not my fault—it’s genetic.

We’re storytellers.