Driving Miss Crazy

We drive along, my mother interrupting nearly every sentence my children begin. It is as though I have a third child competing for attention. I am constantly stopping the conversation and instructing one person or another to continue and then giving a green light to the other when they have finished. Exhausting.

My mother can not help herself under normal conditions and these are far from normal conditions. She’s beside herself with excitement. Tomorrow she and Bill are set to walk through a dozen or so homes for sale with a real estate agent whose name my mother continually mispronounces.

As we drive through town after town, she remarks “Ooooh! How cute! I wonder if Ellie can show us anything here while we’re in the area!”

“Elliott.”

“What?”

“It’s Elliott, Mom. Her name is Elliott.”

And she’s on the phone to the agent. “Hi, Ellie! It’s Estelle! Can you look at the listings for Hometown? It’s just adorable. We’d love to see what’s here!”

And she returns to ranking on my children’s choice of radio stations, as if they care for a nano-second what she thinks. I change the subject.

“So what else did you see at the auction today? Anything good?”

“Oh! Well. We stopped at the booth where the guy sells guns.” (I am swallowing my tongue. She continues.) “He said sales are really picking up lately – you know with this President of ours and all the unhappy people, it is just going to get worse – and there is going to be chaos and anarchy everywhere you look. And with all the tension and unrest, people are going to need to protect themselves in their homes and….”

“MOM!” I yell – resisting the urge to drive into a pole for the sole purpose of ejecting her from the car.

She stops, incredibly, without my having to explain the wide-eyed horror on my children’s faces.

I am shaking by the time we arrive at the outlets. But shopping will have to be distraction enough for the time being. In just over an hour I spend 2 day’s net pay on sneakers and backpacks and cool athletic clothes for him and retro hippy chic clothes for her and a fabulous outfit for me inclusive of a handbag and earrings as salve for my wounds.

And then it's over.

The arrangement of my mother following directions in reverse has me leadfooting and lane changing like a mad woman homeward bound.

And happy hour bound.