Absolutely no human is perfect in the eyes of the world or anyone else.
There has not been a perfect person in 2,000 years. Everybody makes
mistakes. No one is right all the time. Everyone has something wrong
with them. Everyone has a terrible and wicked secret with which they
live. Everyone, stripped to the bare essentials, is out for themselves
and will cut anyone's throat and walk away from anyone in trouble if
doing so means a little less trouble for themselves. All humans are but
a gene or two removed from the primordial slime. People are no good. No
one does anything for anyone. Parents prey on children. Children prey on
parents. People live like beasts of prey, predator or victim, and then
they die.
Well, puppy, all that is wrong.
It might well apply to you. It is possible it applies to me. It might
apply to 90 or so percent of the citizens of planet Earth. But if you
say that about my momma, you're wrong and you take just about as big a
chance on your subsequent survival as some demented ROT renegade
shooting a Ranger's dog.
I don't know about your momma, puppy. But mine is perfect.
That's the bottom line.
There is no more.
I don't know about your momma but mine is perfect. Burn that in what
passes for brain cells between your ears.
And that is why I write an essay or two about the only perfect person I
have ever known about this time of the year, every year, because the
second Sunday in May is Mother's Day and if you don't feel the same way
about your mother as I do, I think you ought to trot down there to the
Davis Mountains and take that shot at a Ranger's dog.
It has been fashionable for a decade or so to blame everything that goes
wrong in an individual's life on their parents. Well everything that
goes wrong in your life is your fault, puppy. It is not your momma's,
not even your daddy's. There is no way your momma had anything to do
with such terrible catastrophes as the Dallas Cowboys, Washington D.C.
or the Kervorkian-assisted death of the Southwest Conference. Your momma
is not responsible for crime in the streets, MTV, Astroturf, fast food
restaurants, property taxes, voice mail and selfish quarterbacks.
At least all this is true about my momma. I don't know about your momma,
puppy. But mine is perfect.
No one alive has ever denied that statement to my face.
My momma gave me life.
She recited Hiawatha to me before I could read. She handed me the Bible
when I was four, Tarzan of the Apes and the Leather Stocking Tales when
I was five.
She dried my tears when I cried and she taught me it was okay to cry so
long as you didn't do it in public.
Because my momma is not afraid of anything, she passed that lack of fear
on to her children. My momma cares more for intellectual and emotional
development than she does for money. But she also knows money is
necessary sometimes and she has helped me in those times through the
years when both my emotions and my wallet were bankrupt. This is a lady
who kicked cancer in the groin and made it say uncle. This is a lady who
never stops loving.
I love that lady. She loves me. That's a given.
It's Mother's Day.
I don't know about your's, but mine's perfect. And I don't even think
she knows it.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom, and many more.
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