Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (14 page)
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Authors: Bathroom Readers Institute
Straight answers for Mother’s Day dilemmas
P
erplexed as to how to show your mom that you care? Just ask Uncle John. He has the answers to all your Mother’s Day questions.
Dear Uncle John,
Help! I need you to settle a spat among my siblings. We can’t agree on how much to spend on mom for this Mother’s Day. I won’t say who’s the cheap one, but it’s not me!
Sign me,
Grateful One
Dear GO,
It doesn’t really matter what you spend, as long as you show your mom you love her. But for the numerically inclined, we did some research and found that a 2002 National Retail Federation survey showed that consumers planned to spend an average of $97 per household on Mother’s Day gifts. That was 36 percent more than the previous year’s average of $62! Men get the honors for generosity to mom—$118 versus $79 for the ladies.
Curious as to how we are spending these bucks on mom? About 80 percent of us will buy cards, sending about 144 million of them. More than half will give flowers,
with mixed bouquets, roses, or tulips as the most popular choices.
And we’ll eat too. Mother’s Day is the second-most-popular occasion to dine out (the first is birthdays), with 30 percent trooping to a restaurant to give mom a break.
Dear Uncle John,
I admit I’m not the best gift giver, but I thought I hit a home run last Mother’s Day, only it turns out I struck out big time. Who knew she wouldn’t like that new baseball mitt? I’d like to hit it out of the park this year, so do you have any help for picking the perfect present?
Sincerely,
Cleanup Hitter
Dear CH,
The best advice that I can give you is to do your research. What does mom like? A Yahoo survey showed that despite our good intentions, we have bad info when we go to get mom a gift. Eighty-eight percent wanted to give their mothers a gift this Mother’s Day but didn’t know the basics.
For example:
•
50% of respondents couldn’t name their mother’s dress size.
•
35% didn’t know their mother’s favorite perfume and an additional 15% weren’t even sure if their mother wore perfume.
•
25% didn’t know their mother’s favorite color.
•
25% didn’t know which flower was mom’s favorite.
So what can help Mother’s Day go well? Experts simply advise talking to mom and asking her what type of day she’d prefer. Treat her like the individual she is and tailor your gift to her individual preferences, not yours. Experts also suggest that honoring mother all year will help all to relax and enjoy Mother’s Day, since there will be less pressure on you to make this one day perfect.
Dear Uncle John,
I often read advice about what to give my mom for Mother’s Day, but I never see advice on what NOT to give. What are the worst things you can give?
Sign me,
Not Wanting to Be the Worst
Dear NWBW,
An interesting question! Several online polls gave moms the chance to sound off about the worst Mother’s Day gifts they’ve ever received. Odds are the best things to avoid are:
•
Nothing.
Mom will always remember when you do nothing, so do something, anything, lest you run the risk of forever being reminded of that Mother’s Day when you did nothing.
•
Kitchen and cooking supplies.
If mom loves to cook, this isn’t a bad idea. But if she dreads time in the kitchen, pots and pans are not the way to go.
•
Gardening tools and housecleaning supplies.
Avoid gifts that create more work or summon up images of drudgery! So no vacuums, toilet brushes, or rakes unless they’re specifically asked for. It’s just too risky.
•
Socks.
If they don’t work as kids’ presents—surprise!—they don’t work for moms either.
•
Clothes.
It’s tough to buy clothing for other people, especially if you’re trying to surprise them. Best to give mom a gift certificate to her favorite store if fashion is her thing.
Dear Uncle John,
Help! I’ve asked my mother many times what she would like for Mother’s Day. She just smiles and says that she’ll love whatever I give her. Since I’m not a little kid anymore, I’m not sure that answer really applies to me. Can you help?
Sign me,
Damage Control
Dear DC,
What a pickle! You’ve tried to do your homework and you’ve been thwarted. So we did some digging and found some great ideas for Mother’s Day gifts that fit all kinds of budgets. For the kind of present you can tie a bow on, here’s what we found moms liked:
•
Flowers
(her favorite blossoms can be so sweet)
•
Perfume
(just be sure to get the kind she actually wears)
•
Electronics
(seems DVD players and digital cameras are hot tickets!)
•
Jewelry
(an option for the husbands in the crowd)
•
Homemade cards
(probably best for the grammar school set)
Other moms prefer gifts of events or outings. Here are just a few:
•
Breakfast in bed
(tried and true)
•
Sunday brunch
(a nice option for the culinarily challenged)
•
Dinner
(at her favorite restaurant, not yours)
•
Quality family time
(her definition, not yours)
•
Spa trip
(massages and wraps and facials, oh my!)
•
Help with chores
(a classic)
Whatever you do, you’ll be sure to make mom feel special!
Ghostly Highway
Have you heard this oft-told urban highway legend? As the story goes, a visibly injured woman flags down a couple driving on the highway. She tells them that there has been a terrible car accident. She fears that her husband is dead, but begs them to save her baby who’s still alive. Leaving the hurt woman with his wife, the husband rushes to wreckage and pulls the baby from the car.
When he returns to his car, the injured woman is gone. His wife tells him that she saw the mother follow him back to the ditch. Only then does the man recall that he saw two adults slumped in the front seats of the car. He gives the baby to his wife and runs back to the scene, but finds a dead man and woman, buckled into their seats with seatbelts. The dead woman is the same one who had enlisted his help to save her baby. This popular legend illustrates the belief in the power of a mother’s love—which can reach from beyond the grave.
Five maternally fueled action films that say: Don’t make mom angry. You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.
The Mom:
Sarah Connor
The Movie:
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
(1991)
The Story:
In this sci-fi/action classic, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the hard-bodied mother of John Connor, a 10-year-old kid who will one day save the world from the evil machine empire, must keep her son from being killed by a time-traveling, shape-shifting robot. Luckily, the robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger is on her side in this movie! Aside from being a lean, mean, fighting machine, Sarah is actually an interesting exploration of parental responsibility—she loves her kid but comes off as incredibly cold because she must give him the military skills he needs to survive. Leave it to writer/director James Cameron to skillfully take the most masculine of film genres and turn it into a study of maternal duties and failings—right under the nose of the teenage boys in the audience. Shhhh. Don’t tell.
The Mom:
Samantha Caine, a.k.a. Charly Baltimore
The Movie:
The Long Kiss Good Night
(1996)
The Story:
Just your average mom, Samantha Caine
(Geena Davis) bakes cookies, teaches school . . . oh, and suffers from amnesia. She discovers little by little that in her past life—the one she doesn’t remember—she was Charly Baltimore, a pistol-packin’, cigarette-smokin’ badass for one of the more disreputable parts of the U.S. government. Once she gets her memory back, it’s only a
matter of time before some old nemeses track her down and use her sweet little daughter as bait to draw her out in the open. Now, if you knew a woman was a super-assassin, would
you
threaten her kid? Yeah, neither would we. Don’t let that scare you away: a bit bloody and violent, but probably a little better than you expect, even if it was directed by Renny Harlin, Davis’s then-husband, of
Cutthroat Island
infamy.
The Mom:
Evelyn O’Connell
The Movie:
The Mummy Returns
(2001)
The Story:
This light-hearted sequel to 1999’s
The Mummy
finds librarian turned tombraider Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) happily married to adventurer Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and raising a precocious little boy. Then that awful mummy from the first film rises from the dead yet again, and this time he needs a bracelet to reveal the location of a secret undead army—a bracelet strapped to the arm of Evelyn’s kid. Kids. They’re always getting into something. The boy’s kidnapped (of course), and Evelyn and Rick work as a team to bring their boy back home. Maternal action highlights include Evelyn picking off bad guys with a rifle as Rick rescues their kid and duking it out with the Mummy’s reincarnated girlfriend both in the 20th century and ancient Egypt. That’s right, she kicks butt across four millennia!
The Mom:
The Bride
The Movie:
Kill Bill
(2003)
The Story:
In this bloody Quentin Tarantino–directed flick, Uma Thurman stars as “the Bride,” a pregnant woman whose name we never learn and who also happens to belong to an elite team of assassins. The Bride is, quite naturally, getting married when the film opens. Unluckily for her, her workplace isn’t so family friendly, and her former coworkers crash the wedding to bump her and her guests off. They don’t quite do it . . . and the Bride wakes up several years later, widowed, without her child, and thirsting for revenge. And boy, does she wreak havoc. Despite the violence, interesting
threads of maternity and family wind their way through the film. Aside from Uma’s character, another assassin turns out to be a mother, which has future consequences as the two women battle to the death. Another character’s backstory has her avenging the death of her mother and father at the hands of the Japanese “Yakuza” crime gangs.
Kill Bill
is only part one of the story, so be on the lookout for part two to find out what happens to the Bride.