Mother Taunts - Words that leave Welts.

  As a kid, I was  somewhat afraid of my mom. These feelings came through in a dream I had about her.

 She was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, holding my shoulders & baring vampire fangs at me. She'd try to bite me, then bare her fangs at me again & again.

 The scenery was exactly as my bedroom was, making it very lifelike.
When I related it to her years later, she responded by saying basically that the problem lie with myself.

  One night, 3 friends, myself & "little miss sunshine" were in the living room. I accidentally knocked over a laundry basket full of folded clothes. Dear Mother (like North Korea's "Dear Leader") exclaimed "you jerkoff!" in front of my fellow teenagers, who burst
out in laughter.

  To this day when I express how that hurt me, she exclaims, "Well,
you knocked over the laundry basket!".

After a few years of raising my children, I decided to go back to work.  I took some of my old work suits out of my closet and placed them on my bed.  My mother looked at what I was doing and said, "You really don't think those suits are still going to fit, do you?"

I don’t know how I stumbled upon this site but I’m glad I did.  I like being reminded of childhood, no matter how painful.  Since no one in my family ever really said anything there was little opportunity for taunting. It was like living on a submarine that was trying to go undetected.  The world was one big depth charge and so we ran silent if not deep. Yep, it was submarine living only w/o the laughs and warmth.  Which is why it’s so nice to read stories of verbal abuse and words used as weapons.  I’m serious.  It speaks of a kind of love to me, the fact that someone would take the time to notice you and speak to you no matter how harshly.  I’m not saying I’m jealous but you know what I mean.  It’s like The Mod Squad, when Pete said his maid locked him in the closet and then Julie said, “Well, at least you had a maid”, to which Link said, “At least you had a closet!”  Wow!  To me, those who were taunted had closets.   And for some reason that makes me feel good.
That said my mother did have the capacity, if not the will, to speak.  And she did so on occasion.  And one thing I remember was her words of wisdom regarding trying to achieve something:  “Don’t bother, don’t even try. That way, you won’t be disappointed.”
Words we can all live by, I suppose.  Anyway, thanks for this site.  I look forward to hearing more taunts --more happiness!—and I hope to remember other things that I might have heard myself.  (I know what you’re thinking:  this is painful!   But no, it’s good, it’s all good.)

It’s Christmas morning and I’m at my parents’ house surrounded by lovely wrapped gifts. There was a large gift bag filled with lots of boxes that all seemed equal in size.

“You gotta open these first – before Aunt Gin gets here!” says my mom as she cackles and crackles with laughter.

I pick up the first box from the bag… It’s incredibly light… What the hell could this possibly be?

“Tampons? REALLY? Oh you shouldn’t have.”

My mom continues to laugh hysterically as I open box after box after box of tampons.

“Merry Christmas!! I gotcha a whole YEAR’s supply of tampons!!!”

Nothing says holidays like having to unwrap a dozen boxes of your favorite feminine product.

Ribbit.

http://triplefrog.com

What could have provoked my mother to say to me at a large family dinner, "Barb, don't be such an asshole."? I still don't know.

My mother had little tolerance for know-it-all kids, especially the little boy down the street who she derisively nicknamed "The Brain Surgeon". One Halloween he came to foolishly trick or treat at our house. My mother placed a Clark bar in his bag. "You know," the boy said. "They found rat hairs in Clark bars." My mother witheringly responded, "Here, then take two." It still makes me laugh today.

My mother is impeccable. Dressed to the nines. Full make up. Not a hair out of place. That's why it was always distressing for her to see me and my friends getting ready to go out on Saturday night. Most of my friends preferred a more natural look. She would say that no one would pay any attention to us. As we were headed out the door she would chase us down the stairs with a lipstick in her hand yelling, "Please, girls, more lipstick!"

Getting ready for any special occasion was a challenge and as a Roman Catholic --  that included Sunday Mass. My Mother's idea of perfection was the image of her 5 daughters attending mass in their dresses, "good" coats, and white gloves. This imagined standard of perfection manifested itself in many ways toward the children, but the worst was the white glove ritual.

 The white gloves could never be found resulting in arguments over whose gloves were on whose hands, shrieks from my mother striking to the core, and blow-ups every Sunday en-route to this supposedly spiritual experience. It always went something like “You girls are such slobs you can never find anything you are looking for!” It seems such hypocrisy to me as I sat there in church with 2 left hand gloves covering my left and right hand – physically uncomfortable by the gloves – and wondering if every other kid was subject to the weekly pre-church experience.

 With the focus on the external – seeing her kids pass the white glove test every Sunday – o the sense of failure and “not good enough” it caused.

 Fortunately this negative quality in my mother disappeared during my sophomore year at college but it certainly was a quality that “launched a thousand neuroses”.

After complaining to my mother in the morning that I didn't feel well. she proceeded to drive me to school anyway since she insisted I would be fine by the second period. Besides she had a scheduled tennis lesson that day. Needless to say, I threw up and had to be sent home just in time to screw up her tennis lesson which provoked her to say not to anyone in particular, "It's like having a monkey on my back." I wonder who she could have been referring to?

My mother and I were more or less the same size. I had a special occasion so I asked her if I could wear a particular dress of hers. I put the dress on and modeled it in front of my mother who said, "That dress looks better on me!" Thanks, Mom!!

I miss my mom, who died 2.5 years ago.  But sometimes she was sure tactless! Background:  My Mom was extremely competent and well-read and had she not gotten married at age 20 during WWII and had seven children, would have been able to be a CEO of a large corparation.  She prized intelligence over just about any other quality in a person.  I married a brainy guy who reads everything and can converse about you-name-it with anyone.

My daughter was my mom's youngest grandchild, and my mom had a special place in her heart for my girl.  That's all good.  One time, when Madeline (daughter) said something particularly bright  for a 3 year old, my mom exclaimed, "Oh, that Madeline!  She's just SO smart.  She gets it from Chuck (my husband) you know."  Then, sensing that several people in the room noticed how she had just dissed ME big-time, she added, "Oh, and OUR SIDE of the family".

Gee, thanks, mom.  Now I feel SO much better that you andmy siblings may have contributed to our daughter's intelligence, but not ME, the child's mother!

Hairstyles of the 1970s were not very kind to those of us with curly hair. I spent that entire decade with my hair wrapped or ironed just to make it smooth and manageable. My mother certainly knew of all my efforts to make my hair straight. One morning, when I had come down to breakfast before attempting to style my hair, my mother greeted me with, "Your hair looks like a rat's nest."

This was her response to attending school plays, parent-teacher conferences, and pretty much anything that had to do with my sisters and me.

Gifts from my mother were always unremarkable and dirt cheap. The broken squirrel lamp or the dated Christmas ornament for 1983 when it was 1985 come to mind. She continued this tradition with my own children. While she was in Florida, my mother sent my daughter an ashtray for her twelth birthday. When I got up the nerve to tell my mother I thought it was an inappropriate gift to give a little girl, she responded, "She's going to start smoking sooner or later."

Everyone loves to hear about the day they were born - the apprehension and the excitement - except for me. My mother related her experience to my cousin and me. After the nurses had cleaned me and bundled me in a blanket, they handed me to my mother to hold. She said she looked into my face and whispered, "I'm going to make you perfect." She seemed proud of herself when she told us. If perfection was what she was looking for, I'm fairly certain I disappointed her profoundly.

I never really thought about my nose. My two older brothers and I all had the same prominent nose. One night, I was sitting at the end of my parents' bed. I had just taken a shower and had a towel wrapped around my head. My mother stared into my face and said, "Have you ever thought about getting your nose done?" My nose job was scheduled for July of that summer.

Clothes shopping with my mother was always fraught with tension. And shopping for a prom dress was the pinnacle of a bad experience. I wanted to go with my friends, but my mother insisted I shop with her so I wouldn't buy a dress that she felt was too revealing. After trying on a multitude of dresses, my mother commented, "I wonder where you got your wide hips from?"

I had been working in video production for about five years as a writer/producer. At that time, it was still a relatively new industry and I liked to think that I was fairly successful. One holiday, the whole extended family was sitting around the table talking about our work. My uncle took an interest in my job and was asking me about editing equipment and line production. We had a nice back-and-forth as I answered his questions about the latest technology. My mother sticks her head in between the two of us, looks at me and says, "What do you know about video?"

Growing up in my house, God help you if you ever fell and hurt yourself. Somehow your own carelessness was to blame. It got to the point that when I tripped on the bottom of my bell bottom jeans coming down the stairs, I would cry out "Sorry!" as I slammed the back of my head into the step and bumped down the flight. No matter what the injury, my mother's response was always the same: "For Christ's sake. What's wrong now?"