Neon Green Eggs and Ham

Dearest Darling Readers,
So...I have this mother. And she is SCARY. Now, not in the usual sense of scary mothers. My mother is an ex-prosecutor who won 100% of her over 1200 cases. Now she is a college advisor. A bit of an ironic transition, I think. But seriously, you can ask any of my friends who have ever met my mom. She is frightening.

She has pushed me my whole life. She pushed me to be a competitive diver for 5 years. I was ranked 6th in the tri-state area in my age group and had practice 6 days a week, and even practices before school. I absolutely hated it. She never even asked me if I actually like diving. I finally broke and quit when I was 12.
She pushes me in school. "A- in Spanish! Grounded!" I am dead serious, that actually happened once. She pushes me to do everything better. No, not just better, to do everything best. Not my best, the best. Ask Bimbo, my mother once said "If you're not the best at something, don't bother doing it." She is absolutely crazy. And not at all in the normal sense. I can't really get into it too much, but hopefully you get the point.


But today, my friends, I would like to address a few of the things that my mother did successfully as a parent. She always put me down. This helped me to grow accustomed to failure. Isn't great that now when I fail, it's not such a huge disappointment? I just want to thank her for preparing me so well for life! She always compared me to my peers and to my brother (in a negative way of course), so now I do the same! It seems like I am always trying to compete with people, but of course I'm hardly ever better at anything than anyone else. I have to talk myself up just to feel like I'm half as good at anything as some of my friends are. I'm not the best at anything, which of course is a breach in her philosophy. But hey, at least now I've learned that Life truly is a competition. I think that that's a really great thing to learn early on; that way you don't go through life thinking that just trying your hardest and doing your best is ever good enough. I truly feel sorry for the poor suckers who believe that crap.

So Mom, thank you so much for giving me the lessons that I need to succeed in life. You know what, maybe I WILL go flip burgers at McDonalds! And hey, maybe I'll even be the BEST burger flipper! Will that make you happy?

~Book