by Rachel Ament
I was furious. I should have reported her for identity theft when I had the chance because it only got worse.
The biggest problem with having your mother impersonate you online is, well, all of it. For example, the username she selected. While I’m relieved she didn’t incorporate my actual name into the profile, I still feel a tinge of embarrassment about the username she chose.
Since some other witty Jewess had already snagged “FunnyGirl,” my username was FunnyGirl followed by seven random numbers. Turns out there are a lot of FunnyGirls on JDate, but there’s only one who would never call herself that in a million years. Also, I’m pretty sure my mother selected the name less as a nod to my career as a comedy writer and more as a tribute to Barbra Streisand—because single, straight guys love Streisand references!
Then there was my profile picture. She uploaded the same picture of me three times—because she’s a mom. So, basically, if a guy looked at my profile picture and thought I was cute, he’d click “more pictures” to make sure the first pic wasn’t just a miracle of good lighting. But instead of seeing more pictures of me, he’d just see three identical thumbnails. If I were a guy looking at my profile, I’d think, this girl has only taken one good picture in her life—and here it is three more times. I looked more like FuglyGirl than FunnyGirl.
I sincerely don’t mean to offend any guy who messaged me (or, rather my mom) on JDate, but that profile was crap. It goes without saying that the personal details she filled out were all generally wrong. In the JDate questionnaire, my mother made me seem like I was more religious than I actually am and less picky than I actually am. You know, because she wants me to be happy.
I assume any guy who messaged my account during this time was either sending mass emails without first looking at the profiles or had very low self-esteem. My mother, on the other hand, was more optimistic about these guys. After only one day of pimping me out to local Jewish singles, she sent me the following email:
The guys are going crazy for you. I am eliminating all the Russians, Israelis, out-of-towners, Orthodox, idiots. I told one guy I am your mother, tell me about yourself, and click! It was a booty call. Don’t go out on those! One guy that might call you is French American. Stuck-up, but he’s in your business and could help you but be careful if he calls. Not husband material.
The only thing more mind-boggling than my mother giving my phone number to a complete stranger on the Internet is the fact that she knows the term, “booty call.” More importantly, why would I want to date some guy who hung around to talk to a girl’s mother? Like I’d be all, “Glad you and my mom hit it off. Let’s make out!” Ew. No. Ew.
On a daily basis, my mother would forward me profiles of guys she thought I should marry or meet. In each email, she’d include a little personal message about why I should consider the guy. Here are some of the actual messages she sent me:
This is your guy. Please don’t pass him up. I love him!
Yeah, but you also love shopping at Chico’s and going to Zumba. Not convinced. Sorry, Mom.
This guy is looking for a short East Coast brunette with a sarcastic sense of humor. He also doesn’t want children. How can you not meet him just for coffee on Sunday?
In her defense, I fit the bill. I genuinely feel bad I didn’t meet this one. Luckily for him, there are plenty of other sarcastic East Coast brunettes who don’t want children in the sea, specifically the Dead Sea.
Is 50 too old? He is in show business. That is Hollywood for you. He says he wants to live to 120. So that would make him not middle-aged yet!
Fifty is not too old, but wanting to live to 120 is too crazy. Next.
A DOCTOR WHO LOVES DOGS. CALL HIM!!! NOT SURE HE WANTS KIDS!!! CALL HIM!
Truth be told, I also got excited when I read this. I love dogs and I admire doctors. Okay, fine, I love pills—but still! This JDate dude seemed perfect…until I looked at his full profile. In addition to living in the middle of nowhere, USA, he was very overweight. His deal-breaker body had nothing to do with me being superficial; it was just a major red flag. A fat doctor is like a homeless realtor—the epitome of a bad investment.
After six long months, my JDate membership finally expired. During the entire time the account was active, I didn’t go on one date, something I now regret. My mother put a lot of effort into screening potential sons-in-law and all I did was roll my eyes at her. Fortunately, there’s always a second chance. I have another birthday right around the corner. Maybe this year, she’ll send a video to ABC, explaining why I should be the next Bachelorette. Maybe she’ll surprise me with a mail-order husband. Who knows? The only thing I know for sure is that it will only get worse with age.
SELECTIVE STAGE MOTHERING
Sari Botton
“Feelings.” Fucking “Feelings.”
It was the only song on the list that I knew all the words to.
My aunt and uncle had brought me to a family-friendly sing-along piano bar and restaurant in Los Angeles. I’d expected that night, one of the last of 1978, to be the highlight of my ten-day visit from the boring south shore of Long Island. The trip had been my aunt and uncle’s bat mitzvah present to me, and aside from the opportunity to have beachy fun in the winter with them and my cousins, I was most thrilled about the prospect of getting “discovered” while I was out there.
At thirteen, I was determined to climb my way to stardom. I wanted to sing and dance and act everywhere I could—stage, screen, that Hi-C commercial advertised in the latest issue of Leo Shull’s Show Business, a weekly trade rag for which my gay boyfriend and I pooled our allowances.
I wasn’t going to be allowed to audition for that commercial, though. Reluctant to find herself in the role of stage mother—and to her credit, concerned about the potential ill effects of child stardom or, worse, rejection in pursuit of child stardom—my mom rarely let my sister and me go on the auditions for the commercials and musicals a talent agent in town would call about. If I was going to be a star, I needed to take matters into my own hands. So when my aunt and uncle invited me out for a week and a half in sunny California, I brought along an agenda.
I was feeling confident. I’d just come off a two-year run as the star of the school musical, first as Guinevere in Camelot, then as Lola in Damn Yankees. And during summer camp, I’d played the title role in Annie. (I’d also done a pretty bang-up chanting job at my bat mitzvah that fall. Everyone said so.)
All I needed was one lucky break. Just one big-deal agent who might randomly venture out to a cheesy sing-along bar and restaurant on a Monday night and be blown away by a kid belting, “But the World Goes ’Round,” a world-weary Kander and Ebb number sung by Liza Minnelli in the movie New York, New York.
“What a set of pipes!” I was sure said agent would shout. “Somebody get me her number!” Yes, of course that was going to happen.
Then, I’d have no choice but to move the three thousand miles from New York to LA, leaving my messy, divorced family life behind. Getting through that, day to day, had been my most challenging acting job. My parents kept praising me for being so grown up about their split and everything that happened in its aftermath. How could I tell them it all ripped me up? That I was hurting? I had to keep that to myself.
At night, I’d sit in the bottom of my closet and whisper my—well, my fucking feelings—into my blue Panasonic tape recorder. “It’s not fair that my stepsisters get things when we go shopping, and my sister and I don’t…I am so mad that my mother wouldn’t let me audition for Really Rosie…and I wish she and her boyfriend would break up…My little sister is wrong. I am not going through a stage…” (To my horror, one night, I accidentally recorded those feelings over my bat mitzvah practice tape and had to ask my cantor father to make me another one.) That LA piano bar held my big chance to escape that misery.
But the pianist knew only Top 40 pop tunes. And the only one on the list I knew the words to—how did I
know the words?—was “Feelings.” There are no bad songs, only bad singers, I chided myself, recalling something I’d heard in the children’s theatrical workshop where I took classes.
When it was my turn, I put down my fork, stood up at my place at our table, and belted my thirteen-year-old heart out. “Feeeeeeeelings. Whoa, whoah, whoa, feeeeeeeelings…”
And then it was over. Somebody else’s turn. A guy got up and sang “Escape (The Piña Colada Song).” Life went on. No agent came up to me. That was it—my big chance was over.
• • •
Weeks after that holiday break, back on Long Island, the spring semester of religious school began at our Reform synagogue. Tuesdays and Thursdays we had Hebrew school, and Sundays we had Sunday school, with different teachers for each.
In Sunday school, we mostly learned about Jewish history and traditions. After a full week of regular school, most of us found it tedious and boring. The only saving grace was when the guy with a guitar—and a bad 1970s long-hair comb-over like Michael Stivic, a.k.a. Meathead on All in the Family—would come to our classroom and teach us Jewish folk songs.
Well, until that January it had been the only saving grace.
When that second semester began, and the sing-along guitar guy came to our class, suddenly, curiously, no one was willing to open their mouths anymore. No one. Not even nerdy, slightly cross-eyed Ronnie Slater. And she used to love to sing!
This was the same dude who’d been showing up for years with his beat up acoustic to play “Shabbat Shalom, hey! Shabbat Shalom, hey! Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat Shalom…” and other favorites. Same classroom. Same kids.
But we were in eighth grade now. Things were clearly different.
Guitar Guy showed up another day and started strumming and singing. But instead of joining in, everyone winced and stared at their feet. I wasn’t sure what to do and so mumbled, barely moving my mouth. “Shbbt shlm…”
This went on for weeks. Guitar Guy would start playing again, and the whole class would shuffle awkwardly.
“Why won’t anyone sing?” he finally asked.
By that time it dawned on me that we’d been issued a new commandment: thou shalt not sing, unless thou wants to be totally, tragically uncool. Heck if I was going to sing.
Except. My mother was now my Sunday school teacher. Mr. Sapperstein, our teacher that fall, hadn’t come back after the holiday break. Rumor was he’d had a nervous breakdown.
“What’s up with you guys?” Guitar Guy asked. There was an awkward silence. Guitar Guy shrugged.
“Sari loves to sing!” my mother interjected, filling the excruciating void. “Sing, Sari! Sing! Come on!”
The wiseass kids in the back chortled. The semi-cool kids all shuffled. The geeky kids looked like they were waiting for me to sing so they could, too. I just stood there, mortified.
There was no way I was singing! It was bad enough bearing the stigma of being the teacher’s daughter. I gave my mother the look. The indignant “How could you?” look. It was a look I had only recently cultivated. I maintained that particular scowl the rest of the class and after class and during the ride home and all the livelong day.
She got the message and didn’t dare to ask me to sing in class, ever again. But then, when company came over, she started making requests.
“Why don’t you sing ‘Tomorrow,’ Sari!” she’d say after dinner. But I was still mad at her for embarrassing me in class. And I’d learned it wasn’t cool to sing anywhere, ever. And, wait a minute—this was the woman holding me back from certain stardom.
“I don’t feel like singing,” I’d say, once again employing the look.
One night, she had a bunch of other singles over. “Come on, Sari,” she said. “Why don’t you sing something for us? Maybe something from Damn Yankees…” That struck me as pretty selective stage mothering.
“I. Don’t. Feel. Like. Singing.” I said between clenched teeth.
“But you love to sing!” my mother argued. Again, I issued the look. Embarrassed in front of her friends, my mother felt the need to explain.
“Really, Sari has always loved to sing!” she said. “When she was five, a neighbor called me early one Sunday morning to ask me if I knew where Sari was, and then told me she was standing in the driveway, serenading the neighborhood through the garden hose!” All the grown-ups laughed. Ha-ha-ha.
“Back then, when I would push her around the supermarket in a shopping cart, she’d sing a medley of ‘Dayenu’ and ‘We Shall Overcome!’” Ha-ha-ha, they all laughed some more. I died of embarrassment. Somewhere in the middle of the story about how, at around six or seven I staged and starred in an original roller-skating musical on the smoothest porch on the block that I could find—much to the surprise of the family that lived there—I left the living room and headed for the complaint department: my blue Panasonic at the bottom of my closet.
“My mom won’t let me audition for musicals or go on callbacks, but she trots me out to sing for her Parents without Partners meeting? I don’t think so.”
• • •
Fast-forward to the present. I’m pretty sure we’ve all watched enough TV documentaries about child stars turned drug-addicted criminals to know I was lucky my mother didn’t let me pursue that path. I cringe thinking of the person I might have become if she had, and if I had to suffer through not “making it”—or worse “making it” and then growing up to be one of those insufferable, dilettante, former child performers trying to shine, vying for attention in every possible arena, but never succeeding ever again. Never living down that childhood identity, or knowing how much past success was a function of erstwhile cuteness. Always unfulfilled.
Back then, I thought I’d never say this, but I’ll say it now: Thank you, Mom.
At forty-eight, I am a karaoke fiend. I have a few musical projects with my husband in which I sing. And I’m taking jazz vocal lessons. It’s all just for fun, though—I’ve given up all notions of getting “discovered.”
Sometimes, I’ll even sing for my mom. And I never, ever give her the look.
DEVIATED PERCEPTUM
Abby Sher
“Don’t go in the den,” my older sister, Liz, warned. “Mom looks horrible.”
“I heard that!” Mom shouted, followed by a pitiful, “Ooooch.”
I ran to the den—whenever Liz told me to do anything, I did the exact opposite. Mom was sitting in our sagging recliner, surrounded by potted plants that all looked like they were leaning in and trying to camouflage her. Her body was in one piece, I noted. Of course, the only part of her face that was visible was her small gray eyes. She had her glasses propped up on a mound of dish towel stuffed with ice. Little clouds of blood darkened the blue-and-white-checked pattern.
“I tripped over that last step—again,” Mom muttered as I stood in the doorway.
“Can I see?” I asked in a squeaky voice.
“Don’t,” warned Liz.
“Ta-da,” said Mom. She pulled the dish towel away, unveiling a wild mess of purple, red, and all the other colors in the wound-rainbow spectrum. I could make out a nostril and the edge of her top teeth, but the rest was just a huge, puffy train wreck. I wanted to smile like, Hey, that’s not so bad, but I felt sick and my eyes were watery. I held on to the doorjamb for support.
It was not unusual for my mother to be bruised and busted. She was a self-proclaimed klutz and wore her scars proudly—a lumpy knee where she’d lost first prize and a lot of blood in a potato sack race as a kid; a thin white line from her eyebrow to temple marking her crushed eyeglasses (hit by a laundry truck in high school). Her nose was already pretty crooked from past breaks—all self-induced.
Physical hurts never slowed Mom down for long, though. Not like the emotional wounds—growing up in the Depression, giving up her career to be a mom, then losing my dad to cancer while my siblings and I were stil
l just cubs. These were the wounds we never talked about. There were no Band-Aids that size anyway.
So in the case of Broken Nose #3, even though Liz was begging her to stay still and apply pressure, Mom got her plastic surgeon friend to come take a look and then started cooking supper. Nothing else could be done anyway. Her friend prescribed a few days of ice and some scar cream for her lip. The swelling decreased; Mom’s nose got a new knot; and the bruise melted into pale lavender under her still-sparkling eyes.
I know my dad contributed an allele or two, but really I grew up looking like a carbon copy of my mom. So much so that we got stopped at the grocery store or synagogue at least once a week. You know you two are twins, right?
That always made me stand up a little taller and bite my lip in a half smile. I loved being Joanie Sher’s daughter. I could see myself growing into this strong, scrappy, generous woman who was always organizing a charity fund-raiser, feeding a sick neighbor, or organizing talent nights at the local nursing home.
Physically, I knew neither of us was movie star material, but that never seemed to bother Mom. Every day, I studied her drawing a line of stop-sign-red lipstick on her tiny lips (which I also inherited). It was the only time I saw her pause and look at herself for a simple, still moment. It was so fleeting—just a glance, really. Yet in it I heard a silent affirmation of I am Joanie Sher, and I am doing A-okay.
I had a harder time in front of the mirror. That classic Sher schnoz kept blocking my view. As a little kid, I had nosebleeds at least once a week. The first day of kindergarten I had to say my name through a nest of crunchy brown paper towels in the middle of my face. At night I lost serious TV time to my routine of nasal sprays and Vaseline. My mom constantly told me how brave I was throughout.
By fifth grade, the bleeding was under control. But in its wake, I was plagued by a new, more permanent condition. I realized that as I got taller, my nose kept getting longer. And longer. I got bangs. And then a bob. But that damn snout kept hogging up my reflection.
