Bull Penises

Anyone who is married to me knows that I have a keen ability to fight over anything.  Food, bad driving, not tucking the sheets in properly – you name it, I’ve picked a fight about it.  And coincidentally enough, my mother has this same ability.

She calls me yesterday in a huff.

“Your stepfather is driving me crazy.”

This isn’t anything new.

“Oh really? How come?” I say, only half paying attention.  I’ve grown accustomed to my mother calling me to vent.

“We need bull penises and he refuses to get off his ass and go get them!”

“Excuse me?”  She has my attention now.  “Did you just say you’re fighting over bull penises?”

“Yes, he won’t go pick them up!”

(Very obscure.  I am impressed.)

 “I’ve been asking him for three days now and we still don’t have any!” she complains.

At this point I am beyond stumped. “What on earth are you going to do with bull penises?  Surely to God you’re not going to eat them." With my mother, you really never know. When I was a kid she actually served up curried lamb testicles for dinner one night, thinking it would help me to become more cultured.  To this day I avoid anything curried and certainly all forms of lamb. The attempt to make me cultured failed too, since I managed to make it all the way to university believing that Africa was a country.

“No, no,” she tells me as if I'm the one being crazy. “They’re for the dogs," she tells me, explaining that they're actually called bully sticks. "Ceasar Millan recommends them and I have to give them something! They've already destroyed three pairs of shoes and my good reading glasses.” I ask her why she doesn’t go and get the penises herself, but she tells me that’s beside the point.  Her husband should help out more: do more dishes, pick up his dirty laundry, and “buy the damn penises!"

I hang up the phone and the fear sinks in: I really am like my mother.

Gulp.

Namaste,