From my hinted-at complaints about my parents (and Dilf's mom) visiting us a little more than a week ago, you might think they're the kind of parents who rip their children's self-esteem to shreds or abuse them in some other way.
But that's not the case. My mother is not the type to curl her lip and sneer, "When did YOU ever have any interests?" as I witnessed another, meaner old lady say to her adult daughter after said daughter said she'd always thought of trying out for school plays.
No, my mother is just always churning with anxieties and she wants -- no, NEEDS her children to humor her or she'll wind up in the hospital AGAIN with an ulcer.
Most recent example: while my parents were in town, ÜberYounger tripped and skinned her knee. Lightly. You know when it just barely breaks the skin, in some spots? My mother said, "You better watch so she doesn't get MRSA."
I am thinking of the hundreds of thousands or millions of children who, throughout the world, fall and skin their knees any given day. Wouldn't that be some sort of global pandemic? As I look skeptically at her, she says, "Auntie Diane (oh, the "information" that comes from Auntie Diane) said some man got MRSA from a sidewalk. I think he lived in Minnesota."
Now, I'm not the type to run the opposite direction just to defy my parents. I wash the "wound" with soap and water, put some Neosporin on it and a bandage. But it's something I would do anyways; I'm not worried about ridiculous theories about killer bacteria from urban legends.
A week later, A WEEK LATER, my mother is STILL talking about it. "You have to be careful. You never know what germs could be on a sidewalk."
Just to be sure, and this is where my compulsive need for information joins with my mother's anxiety-fueled mania, I Google "MRSA sidewalk" just to see if there's any truth to my mother and her sister's lunacy. I get this link, not because anyone ever got MRSA from a sidewalk but because someone was having a sidewalk sale the same week this story came out.
And now I AM worried about MRSA.
Dammit.
