I Swear It Was Water

When I was 16 years old, you could say that I was far from the model child. My mother would say that I was a B!@*% - but nobody really cares about her opinion. Most of the conversations that I had with my mother while I was growing up occurred in the bathroom. It was the only place that I could have a captive audience for whatever I was trying to get over on her that day.

On this particular day, my mother was in the shower and I was standing in the bathroom trying desperately to convince her that I should be allowed to spend the night with one of my girlfriends. Now, bear in mind, I’m 16, I have a steady boyfriend, I’m asking to spend the night with a friend that I probably hadn’t hung out with in 6 months or so and my mother had audacity to say NO. Uuhhhh – MO-THER – Why not? I mean, it was sooooo obvious that I was telling the truth, how dare she deny me?!? Anyway, the entire time my poor mother was in the shower I’m standing out there, in the steam, frizzing my hair going on and on about how unfair she is, how everyone else gets to spend the night, I PROMISE I’m going to be at my girlfriend’s house, blah, blah, lie, lie.

Finally she turns off the water and opens the shower curtain to grab her towel. She is drying off and I’m steady griping. “You don’t understand me, why can’t I go; you never let me do anything, why can’t you just let me, whine, gripe, beg.” The whole time I’m carrying on, my mother never said a word, she just kept drying off, trying to ignore me. Finally, I guess she’d listened to enough. All of a sudden, I heard this noise come from her – the kind people make when they are trying to clear phlegm from their throat and the next thing I knew she had SPIT in my face. That’s right folks, my very own mother, the one who carried me in her womb, cared for me and nurtured me, nursed me through sickness, fed me and clothed me, SPIT on me! I was shocked!

I stood there in silence (which is what I believe she was shooting for) and disbelief for about 10 seconds before I calmly said, “You SPIT on me!” Now, the look on my mother’s face was priceless. I could tell that she was trying desperately not to laugh but she kept her composer, looked me right in the eye and said, “No I didn’t. That was water from my hair.” Like I had all of a sudden been stricken blind and didn’t SEE her spit in my face. It wasn’t like she waited for me to turn and leave the room before she hurled saliva on me – Nooooo. She spit directly in my face – on my right cheek next to my nose to be exact. I was LIVID! I turned on my heels, marched to my room and slammed the door.

Over the course of the next 12 years, every time I would recount this story in my mother’s presence, she would stick to her “water from my hair” defense. She denied the fact that she has accosted me with a bodily fluid for over a decade. About 5 years ago, we were at a family gathering and one of my aunts was talking about trials she was experiencing with her then 14 year old. My mother was trying to comfort her by telling her stories of my wayward teenage days when I finally heard the words I’d been waiting to hear for 12 years. She said, “Just wait until she’s 16. If you can make it through 16 without spitting in her face, you’ll be lucky”. FINALLY – vindication! After all of those years of her trying to convince me that I was a complete nut job, “I’m your mother, why would I spit on you?” she had finally admitted it.

My mother loves to tell this story now and when she does she always gets the same reaction from her friends, “You spit on your child”. To which she proudly replies, “I sure did, spit right in her face. It shut her up though and she stayed out of the bathroom after that”. Over the years, the laws on child abuse have changed dramatically. You can no longer spank your children in public without someone calling the cops. You can’t yank a branch off a tree and whip them with it even if you call it a “switch”. But you better bet that it’s not against the law to spit on a bitching teenage girl – Nope – you can cover that little heifer in phlegm and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. So all you teenage girls out there who think you can get away with smarting off to your parents – make sure you wear a mask – you never know when your mother might snap.

Love you Mother.