Crap Mom
Growing up, my mom was never on time picking us up. It wasn’t because she was working or otherwise busy. It was because her passions included sleeping a lot, sitting on the couch or the toilet reading magazines, sunbathing by the pool (a metal cattle trough that was admittedly one of her better drunken purchases), talking in hushed whispers to one of her secret boyfriends on the phone when Dad was out of town for work, and eating massive amounts of vanilla ice cream drowning in chocolate syrup with Oreos crumbled on top while screaming at us to “Stay away! The ice cream is mine! Can’t I have anything to myself?!” If anything stood in the way of one of those things, well, it could just wait. I remember one Friday night in 7 th or 8 th grade, my best friend (also named Lisa) and I were going to the mall, and it was my mom’s turn to take us there and then pick us back up later. As Mom swung into the mall’s parking lot to drop us off, I shot a glanc...