Faux Ma

My mom plays fast and loose with words. Case in point: the other day, she tried to get my attention and said, “Johnny, I mean, Dave, um, Jack, Sammers, uh…Norman! I swear, I’m losing my mind.”

Let’s break this down.

Johnny is her brother, my uncle. She most often confuses me with him. He’s handsome, funny, charming. Still, not me. But enough points of comparison exist to warrant the occasional mixup.

Dave is my dad, but we mostly call him Pappo (technically, he’s my stepdad, but he showed up and did the dad work, so we’re going with dad). Still, not me.

Jack is my mom’s first husband (technically, he is my dad, but he didn’t show up to do the dad work, so we’re going with Jack). Their divorce lasted decades (not a typo). He does look a lot like me. Still, not me.

Sammers is my son, her grandbaby. Anyone would be flattered to be confused with his good looks and bright energy. Still, a boy. And also, still, not me.

So in her search for my name, the trajectory was this: brother, husband, ex-husband, grandson, and finally—bingo!—son. Reminds me of that Robin Williams punch line: “Paging Dr Freud…”

My mom might have catapulted Freud to even higher realms of psychoanalytic iconoclasm.

And it’s not just humans that she mixes up. She also confuses artificial intelligence. She recently had this exchange with Siri.

Mom: Alexa?

Siri: …

Mom: Alexa, how do I get to Sam’s basketball practice?

Siri: …

Mom: Wait, not Alexa… Sorry, Serena, Syria, Sierra, Siri! Siri!

Siri: …

Mom: Hey, Siri!

Siri: Hmm?

Mom: Can you get me to Sam’s basketball practice?

Siri: Who is Sam?

Mom: My grandson.

Siri: “Sam, my grandson” is not in your contacts.

Mom: We call him Sammers.

Siri: Calling Sammers…

*iPhone begins to dial…*

Mom: Shit!

Siri: I don’t have an answer for that.

Mom: Alexa, stop calling Sammers. Alexa!

Siri: …

My fifteen-year-old daughter heard this and said it, “Made her laugh her balls off.” She’s her grandmother’s daughter.

A Portrait of My Mother and Siri, 2024.

While language is tricky on my mom, so are directions. If you ask her what the greatest invention is in the history of human kind, don’t count on her to lobby for the wheel or the printing press or penicillin or the light bulb. For her, hands down, it’s any app that helps her navigate freeways and city streets. She once assumed the driving duties on a trip from southern California to Arizona so that my dad could sleep. He woke up and noticed palm trees, quickly deducing that she couldn’t possibly have driven all the way to Florida. Instead of taking the 10 east, she went west and drove to the bosom of the Pacific.

Let’s pump the brakes. I want to be clear. These mishaps are in no way a commentary on my mom’s intelligence. She’s exceptionally bright. In high school, when I was lost while studying T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, she helped me break it down, easily articulating and interpreting the figurative connotations. Intelligences vary. Hers is specific to emotion and fun and nourishment of the soul.

She once saw a commercial of a family on a river rafting trip. She called the number on screen:

Mom: Hi, I want to know how much the river rafting costs?

Operator: Uh, the river rafting?

Mom: Yeah, it looks like so much fun.

Operator: I’m sorry, I think you might have the wrong number.

Mom: Really, I double-checked it. We’re so excited to go on this river rafting trip.

Operator: Um, this is the number to order Rogaine. We have a commercial where Rogaine patients are river rafting…

Mom: Well, can you put me in touch with them? The river rafting trip seems like such a blast.

Operator: …

Say what you will, but I prefer the person who concerns herself with good times first and hair loss second.

And that optimism takes other forms, too. When I first started screenwriting, a producer optioned my script and submitted it to John Cusack’s company (my mom called him John Coo-sack). Essentially, that means my script was mailed in and stacked on a desk among hundreds, maybe thousands of scripts from eager young writers. Still, when I showed up to my mom’s work one day, one of her coworkers said, “Oh, my god! Congratulations! Your mom tells me you and John Cusack have been nominated for an Academy Award!” There’s a fine line, shaped like a silly straw, between delusions of grandeur and a loving, supportive mother.

Pretty sure this is how my mom imagined John and I holding up our Academy Awards outside her house after our Oscar triumph.

My mom’s most recent slip occurred at the drive-thru of an In-N-Out Burger. For those of you who don’t know, In-N-Out is in the conversation for the greatest hamburger on earth (Anthony Bourdain had said as much) and if you factor in price, it’s a hands-down winner. The company is Christian, but more subtle with their convictions than, say, a Chic-fil-A or a Hobby Lobby. They sneak biblical citations on the bottom underside of their cups and on their burger wrappers. I only mention this to underscore that they’re a more conservative organization. Their employees are friendly and clean-cut. If you squint your eyes, you feel like you’re in a 1950s soda shop.

And they have a secret menu, ways to modify your order. Ask for a cheeseburger “animal style” and you get a mustard-cooked patty, extra sauce, grilled onions, and pickles. Any In-N-Out patron who knows what she’s doing orders “animal style.”

Enter my mom. A secret menu with language-specific items and her disposition is a recipe for, well, an entirely different secret menu.

In-N-Out Drive-thru Operator: Welcome to In-N-Out! How can I help you today?

Mom: Hi, I’d like a double-double, fries, and a chocolate shake.

In-N-Out Drive-thru Operator: Would you like onions on that double-double?

Mom: Yes, please. In fact, I’d like it doggy style.

In-N-Out Drive-thru Operator: …

Mom: Hello… Did you hear me? I’d like that double-double doggy style.

In-N-Out Drive-thru Operator: I’m sorry, did you mean animal style?

Mom: Isn’t that what I said?

In-N-Out Drive-thru Operator: Um… no…

Mom: What did I say?

In-N-Out Drive-thru Operator: You said… um… you said you wanted it doggy style.

Mom: Oh, well… whatever it’s called.

One of my favorite qualities of my mom is that she owns her words, even—especially—when they’re the wrong words.

When my mom pulled forward to the drive-thru window, a dozen clean-cut, red-faced teenagers stared back at her, trying and failing to keep from smiling, their hormones bouncing back and forth off the pristine white tiles.

I’ve made a pretty wonderful life for myself, and a lot of it has come by way of how adept I am with writing, with language and words. Makes sense. Being raised by my mom provided a linguistic gymnasium that T.S. Eliot would have difficulty imagining.

Mark Twain wrote in a letter that “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” Of course Twain is right. I would, however, add that the difference between the right word and right wrong word is the difference between lightning and laughing your balls off.

I nominate my mom. :)

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Thanks for reading! If you want another story that features my mom, consider her grim directions in Bunny Rabbits, Kindergarteners, Epiphanies & Other Depressing Things. And if you want to get a sense for how my mom made perpetrated a different sort of mix-up on our family vacation, read Bloody Towels. Or for a little more restaurant humor: Claw and Disorder. You might also peruse how I’m raising my children with an eye on adventure and psychological trauma in Manslaughter, Santa Claus, and a Hatchet. Once you’ve gotten through all of those, maybe just check out the All Kinds of Funny Archive.

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