99 problems and a Mom ain't one...

    My mom always wanted to live in Montana.  I'm pretty sure why.  Living most of her life in Kansas City, Montana seems like a pretty cool place.  I think she would have liked Denver, though.  If you include the Mother's Day that she was pretty much out of it, it's been 20 years.  My mom passed away in 1990 from the evil, fucking (sorry Cam's nephew in the future reading this blog if Uncle Cameron's blog is still linked to mine) cancer.  She died pretty young, 46.  But, her last 8 or nine years were pretty school.
    After she divorced my Dad (yay!), she went back to school and got her Master's in Education.  Eventually, she taught junior high English.  Good for her - bad for me.  Do you know how hard it is to write a term paper that has to be graded twice?  I remember one time I had to write 10 pages about Falstaff (no, not that Falstaff - this one) for a Brit Lit class and after I printed it on my dot matrix printer (the Atari 800 was my computer) and the computer went down and my 5.25" floppy disk (no link, bastards) didn't save right.  Anyway, I had to start over and she helped me write the paper all over again, with footnotes.  Pretty cool memory.
     She was so well respected and revered in her peer group, that the school that she taught at started a creative writing award contest in her honor.  This will be the 20th year that this will be going on.  The principal told me recently that next year there will be middle school kids participating that their parents participated as well.  Pretty cool, too.
     So, my mom taught me a couple of important things in life that I subscribe to, even today.  #1 - "A man with a hard on has no conscience."  Totally true.  Try it out if you don't believe me.  #2 - "Carpe Diem."  Seize the day.  Don't procrastinate, blah, blah, blah.  And finally, "People like hearing their own name, say it."  I try to use that one a lot.  I think it has helped me create relationships with people.  Someone told me a couple of months ago that I was the "Dr. Doolittle of People."  I thought it was funny at the time, even made fun of it.  Probably true though.
    Words of advice from this normally funny blog?  Just call your Mom.  If you have had some problems in the past, doesn't matter - just call her to say, "Hi."
    Gramps taught me, "Gas, Ass or Grass - no one rides for free."  But that's a different post.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.