Let's Get Manipulated!
Here it is March 17, 2006, 57 years to the day that my mother came into the world. I was blessed last night to receive another drunken phone call from her. It’s really silly how the dance with her works.
She gets drunk and then calls people and tries to act normal or does stuff to give people clues that she’s loaded. Then of course she denies it when confronted. It’s like she packs two games and addictions into one ridiculous experience. Maybe it’s all one big game she plays with herself to keep herself busy and avoid how truly pathetic her life has become.
Here she is at 57, divorcing for the 27th time and lives with her mother. Actually she’s on her 4th divorce. It’s still pathetic if you ask me, but it shows a real commitment to failure and mediocrity. She works for $6.50 an hour as an assistant manager at a Family Dollar. She has the audacity to complain when others get drunk and call her to work for them. I guess even drunks have a moral standard.
The truly sad thing about my mother is she really is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Her cognition is just sick. I consider myself a fairly smart guy. I understand people and ideas rather quickly. I occasionally read philosophy and enjoy new ideas. My mother, however, puts me to shame. I can read her texts aloud to her that I find dense and have to reread numerous times to decipher the author’s meaning and she understands them immediately. I think her hyper intelligence and understanding has been the ballast and main instigator of the way she lives her life.
She developed a highly skilled game of manipulation where she never honestly looks at her world and what she’s accomplished, which is essentially nothing. She plays a role. A role where she pretends to fit in with the simple stupidity of everyone around her. Then for drama and amusement she messes with things by getting drunk or playing some manipulative, head game. This leads to people showering her with bizarre attention and those same people wonder why she does what she does. Little do they know they play the perfect part in what she’s trying to accomplish. They end up manipulated. I seem to be the only one who figured this out.
I remember sitting in a counseling session with her and telling her counselors how my mother was manipulating them. Their eyes got big as I pointed out how their doctrine of responses and recovery worked with her idea of manipulation and addiction. They were shocked. I went on to point out the depth of my mother’s manipulation and how they were actually the butt end of some sick alcoholic’s joke. One counselor in the session, my mother had two at the time, sat there with her jaw hanging slightly open. The other just looked at the floor rather embarrassed. My mother squirmed in the chair next to me. My mother didn’t realize yet I had figured this out. Still my mom enjoyed watching her counselors blown away by what I said. After their meeting with me, her counselors met between the two of them to decide what was best for my mother. They decided their current counseling methods weren’t working and one quit within a month. The other was gone shortly after that.
The paradox is Mom really is a sweet woman. She’s just so caught up in herself that she never really looks at life without jaded eyes. Last night during the blessed phone call she asked again for the 100th time if she could come and visit me and my family. My answer was the same it always has been; sure you can come if you stay in a hotel. But she was drunk, oh and here is one of the little clues, and forgot what the hell I said the last time she called drunk.
The truly humorous moment during the phone call came when her mother knocked on the door to her room. My mother had to quickly exit our conversation because her mother wanted to talk to her. She had something to hide and had to get it out of the way before her mother came in. Five minutes later my mother called back with some lame excuse about why she had to go and proceeded to repeat herself.
I don’t know why someone pushing 60 continues to do what she does, especially with someone almost 85 like my grandmother. I know why she plays the game with me. She does because it’s what she does and that’s all she chooses to know anymore. I do wish she’d stop messing my grandmother and just drink herself into a silent, private oblivion.
On a lot of levels, I find these phone calls annoying. I know what they are about and can get over them with pretty quickly. I also know that my mother is basically a waste of human flesh. She never really does anything beyond creating a personal crisis for herself. Her last marriage ended when she drank in the same house her husband lives in. The hilarious part of this situation is he killed someone in a drunken driving accident a few years previous. One of his parole stipulations was that he may have no alcohol in his home. My mother gets the bright idea to play the, lets get drunk at home game, and screw with her husband’s freedom. He gets angry of course and throws her out. He’s been manipulated!
She complains about him and his awful behavior. Apparently he had an affair, but I have to say that drinking at home was a pretty disrespectful thing for her to do. I mean she could have gotten drunk in the local pub and walked home drunk, then passed out. But noooooooo she had to get drunk at home, maximize the rewards of the manipulation game and risk his probation. Apparently he had had random home checks for alcohol.
My mother is just one of those lost causes everyone deals with in life. There are a lot of great people in the world but she chooses not to be one of them. I’m working on being one and on this St. Patrick’s Day, 2006, my mother’s birthday I sit here at 7 a.m. drinking a beer in her honor. Here’s to you mom. I’ll have the first one of the day. Guess what? I don’t have to hide it either!
Thanks for reading to the end. Seeya next week!
In a post script to this column, my mother actually managed to call me sober. She managed to get her own car and got a second job for a whopping $10 per hour. It’s not much but it’s a start. I’ll quote the script of Vanilla Sky, “every single minute is an opportunity to turn everything around.” It could happen with her but I’m pretty sure I’d pass out holding my breath. The only thing that I can say in her defense is that she finally admitted to the manipulation game. Maybe she will turn it around. The rest of the world will not wait for her to see if she does.
She gets drunk and then calls people and tries to act normal or does stuff to give people clues that she’s loaded. Then of course she denies it when confronted. It’s like she packs two games and addictions into one ridiculous experience. Maybe it’s all one big game she plays with herself to keep herself busy and avoid how truly pathetic her life has become.
Here she is at 57, divorcing for the 27th time and lives with her mother. Actually she’s on her 4th divorce. It’s still pathetic if you ask me, but it shows a real commitment to failure and mediocrity. She works for $6.50 an hour as an assistant manager at a Family Dollar. She has the audacity to complain when others get drunk and call her to work for them. I guess even drunks have a moral standard.
The truly sad thing about my mother is she really is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Her cognition is just sick. I consider myself a fairly smart guy. I understand people and ideas rather quickly. I occasionally read philosophy and enjoy new ideas. My mother, however, puts me to shame. I can read her texts aloud to her that I find dense and have to reread numerous times to decipher the author’s meaning and she understands them immediately. I think her hyper intelligence and understanding has been the ballast and main instigator of the way she lives her life.
She developed a highly skilled game of manipulation where she never honestly looks at her world and what she’s accomplished, which is essentially nothing. She plays a role. A role where she pretends to fit in with the simple stupidity of everyone around her. Then for drama and amusement she messes with things by getting drunk or playing some manipulative, head game. This leads to people showering her with bizarre attention and those same people wonder why she does what she does. Little do they know they play the perfect part in what she’s trying to accomplish. They end up manipulated. I seem to be the only one who figured this out.
I remember sitting in a counseling session with her and telling her counselors how my mother was manipulating them. Their eyes got big as I pointed out how their doctrine of responses and recovery worked with her idea of manipulation and addiction. They were shocked. I went on to point out the depth of my mother’s manipulation and how they were actually the butt end of some sick alcoholic’s joke. One counselor in the session, my mother had two at the time, sat there with her jaw hanging slightly open. The other just looked at the floor rather embarrassed. My mother squirmed in the chair next to me. My mother didn’t realize yet I had figured this out. Still my mom enjoyed watching her counselors blown away by what I said. After their meeting with me, her counselors met between the two of them to decide what was best for my mother. They decided their current counseling methods weren’t working and one quit within a month. The other was gone shortly after that.
The paradox is Mom really is a sweet woman. She’s just so caught up in herself that she never really looks at life without jaded eyes. Last night during the blessed phone call she asked again for the 100th time if she could come and visit me and my family. My answer was the same it always has been; sure you can come if you stay in a hotel. But she was drunk, oh and here is one of the little clues, and forgot what the hell I said the last time she called drunk.
The truly humorous moment during the phone call came when her mother knocked on the door to her room. My mother had to quickly exit our conversation because her mother wanted to talk to her. She had something to hide and had to get it out of the way before her mother came in. Five minutes later my mother called back with some lame excuse about why she had to go and proceeded to repeat herself.
I don’t know why someone pushing 60 continues to do what she does, especially with someone almost 85 like my grandmother. I know why she plays the game with me. She does because it’s what she does and that’s all she chooses to know anymore. I do wish she’d stop messing my grandmother and just drink herself into a silent, private oblivion.
On a lot of levels, I find these phone calls annoying. I know what they are about and can get over them with pretty quickly. I also know that my mother is basically a waste of human flesh. She never really does anything beyond creating a personal crisis for herself. Her last marriage ended when she drank in the same house her husband lives in. The hilarious part of this situation is he killed someone in a drunken driving accident a few years previous. One of his parole stipulations was that he may have no alcohol in his home. My mother gets the bright idea to play the, lets get drunk at home game, and screw with her husband’s freedom. He gets angry of course and throws her out. He’s been manipulated!
She complains about him and his awful behavior. Apparently he had an affair, but I have to say that drinking at home was a pretty disrespectful thing for her to do. I mean she could have gotten drunk in the local pub and walked home drunk, then passed out. But noooooooo she had to get drunk at home, maximize the rewards of the manipulation game and risk his probation. Apparently he had had random home checks for alcohol.
My mother is just one of those lost causes everyone deals with in life. There are a lot of great people in the world but she chooses not to be one of them. I’m working on being one and on this St. Patrick’s Day, 2006, my mother’s birthday I sit here at 7 a.m. drinking a beer in her honor. Here’s to you mom. I’ll have the first one of the day. Guess what? I don’t have to hide it either!
Thanks for reading to the end. Seeya next week!
In a post script to this column, my mother actually managed to call me sober. She managed to get her own car and got a second job for a whopping $10 per hour. It’s not much but it’s a start. I’ll quote the script of Vanilla Sky, “every single minute is an opportunity to turn everything around.” It could happen with her but I’m pretty sure I’d pass out holding my breath. The only thing that I can say in her defense is that she finally admitted to the manipulation game. Maybe she will turn it around. The rest of the world will not wait for her to see if she does.
posted by morrisson66 at 3:54 AM
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