Here Comes The Rage

I was sitting eating sushi with my mother in the middle of a work day, and although the lunch was going okay, it wasn't our normal happiness level of pink champagne bubbles and newborn kitten fluff. My mom was way stressed out, which I didn't fully comprehend at the time, and I had a different problem: my head was so full of stuff THAT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT that I couldn't, for the life of me, make conversation about ANYTHING else.

You know the feeling, I'm sure. Someone tells you a secret like "I'm proposing to my boyfriend, please don't tell him" or "Sally's parents are getting a divorce because her dad's sleeping with the babysitter", or something equally absorbing and awful, and then you go to a nice party where everyone knows Sally AND Sally's parents AND the couple about to get engaged, unbeknownst to the would-be fiance, and some nice acquaintance asks you a difficult question like,

"Awfully hot weather we're having for May, isn't it?"

And you say, "....Mmmm." Thinking, Don'tsayanythingaboutsally. Don'tsayanythingaboutengagementorweddings.

And then the nice person makes a complicated follow-up statement like, "And I hear it's supposed to be 90 this weekend."

And you SNAP and say, "I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MIKE PROPOSING TO JIM AND I NEVER MET SALLY IN MY LIFE PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE." And then your life is ruined. Boy, some people get so upset about a few secrets.

ANYWAY. That's how this lunch was. My mom was silent, picking at her food, since I had taken her to eat sushi, which she doesn't really like, and the rice was sticking in her braces, and I could barely eat since my head was so full of sex and violence and secrets.

She said something very prying and nosy, like, "Pass the soy sauce," and you can guess what happened next.

"OH MY GOD MY VIOLENT ALCOHOLIC EX DROPPED BY MY HOUSE AND KICKED OUT SOME WINDOWS AND THE COPS WERE CALLED AND THEN I HAD A GREAT WEEKEND WITH MY AWESOME BOYFRIEND WHICH INVOLVED A TRIP TO URGENT CARE AND A PHARMACY TRIP AND THEN I DROPPED MY BIKE AND BY THE WAY I OWN LEATHER PANTS."

She was a little startled, as you may imagine. She rallied, though, and spent the next ten minutes yelling at me for ever letting someone that could be described as a violent alcoholic into my life in the first place. Understandable. I said I had told T-Town, she of Insight and Intrigue, and mom said, "Did she say 'I told you so'?"

And I nodded, just keeping the conversation going.

But the really interesting thing is, T-Town never said I told you so. She told me plenty of times while I was DATING the loser that he was a huge loser who frightened her. But the minute the excrement really hit the cooling device, she was nothing but understanding. The Blonde Squad, too, was nothing but understanding when I told them later that night. No one ever said I Told You So except my mother. Which is only proper, as she does an excellent job.