Growing up in New York, I spent many an evening at a friend's house hanging out with his family and joining them for meals. It got to the point that I started to refer to my schoolmate's mother as "Mom", and it just kinda stuck. She wasn't the only adopted mom of mine in NY, but she was my favorite. (And yes, my real Mom is just fine; I just sort of collected adopted moms along the way thru life)
Eventually I moved out here to the Las Vegas area (just about 10 years ago as of this writing). I had been working in my new office for probably only a few weeks at the time, slowly getting to sort-of know some of the over 100 employees in the building. My previous office in NY had only about 15 routes in it, so there were maybe 2 dozen people there on any given day. Everybody knew everything about everybody, whether you wanted to or not. I was kinda glad to be going to a big office, with a large population of employees, where I hoped I’d just be an anonymous cog, blending in unnoticed…yeah, that didn’t last too long…
Some of my personality was showing on this particular day, as I came back to the office with my mini boom box blasting music. Never being sure of what route I was going to be on that day, I carried this thing around instead of a Walkman for my tapes (pre-iPod & iPhone days, kiddies), as I could leave it playing while driving and hopping in and out of the truck to deliver mail at boxes. Meant a lot of rechargeable batteries, but it was worth it. It’s almost impossible for me to not be hearing music or comedy on a constant basis. It quiets both the brain and the tinnitus.
As I unloaded my truck and made my way into the office with my stuff, my music maker was perched atop my empty trays. As the music emanated quite loudly, a female employee approached me. “Is that Louie, Louie?” she asked, half to be sure it was that song, because it was being covered by Motorhead, and half because…well, here’s why…
This woman, who I barely knew, and frankly, I can’t remember now if I even knew her name at this point, stopped right in front of me and, hands-on-hips, had asked me, “Is that Louie, Louie?” My response…”Yup.” She then asked, hands remaining on her hips, “How old are you?“ “28.“ Her response? To have her hands shoot up her sides from her hips to just under her armpits and shriek, “I HAVE CHILDREN OLDER THAN YOU!” I responded the only way I could think of…
“MOM!”
Big goofy grin on my face, arms outstretched, I’d found my adopted Mom in my new home. It stuck, as 10 years later, she’s still Mom. It stuck so much that our most senior citizen, the now 76 year old carrier (that I used to tell people on his route that he was dead) calls her Mom, even though he’s got her beat by something approaching 20 years. Although if you ask her, she’s only 38...
Blog Post Soundtrack; M.O.D., Tool, Brant Bjork (selections from his Saved By Magic album), Misfits (several tracks live in Boston in 1983, including a great Black Flag cover), Minutemen, Pearl Jam, White Stripes, Foo Fighters, Simon & Garfunkel, Soundgarden, Yawning Man, Parannoyd, and, of course, Motorhead covering Louie, Louie…
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