Lucky 13

published on Saturday, November 7, 2009 12:14 AM MST

By DENISE MALLOY Local columnist

Older Boy will turn 14 in the near future and I’m planning a blowout to mark this auspicious occasion. I do love birthdays but this year it’s just a little different. This year I’m going to celebrate not killing him while he was 13.

Call me a sentimental fool.

As much as I hate to admit, it’s not entirely his fault. Responsibility for this rests elsewhere. Because when things go wrong in my life, there’s only one person to blame. My mother.

This whole predicament falls squarely on her shoulders, and I’m betting she’d freely admit it.

Because it all started when I was 13. When I was 13, I knew everything. And I let my parents know that I had now acquired superior intellect upon my recent entry into the teenage years and I really didn’t need their advice anymore. I could handle life on my own now, thankyouverymuch, despite the fact I was in eighth grade, unemployed and without a driver’s license.

I was also fairly certain that my parents had transformed into the dumbest people on planet Earth. I was confident that their sole purpose in life was to embarrass their only daughter. And I made it a point to let them know this at every possible waking moment.

As my mother would say, “She’s got a mouth on her that won’t quit.”

My mother, being a woman of infinite patience, tried to talk to me. I would just give her a dramatic eyeroll, sigh and start mouthing off about one of her stupid, mom-like ideas. After awhile, she began to ignore my disparaging adolescent remarks. But one day, my mother simply had enough of my teenage outbursts and know-it-all attitude.

And that’s when it happened.

Having been the recipient of one too many theatrical eyerolls, coupled with a startling “Mom!” pronounced as three syllables, and my harsh, unrelenting teenage criticisms, my mother was rightfully at wit’s end. And she lost it. With that, my mother did the only thing she could think of: she put the Voodoo Whammy Curse on me. Before the next hateful word could fall from my lips, she stuck her index finger an inch from my nose, looked me right in the eye and said through gritted teeth, “One day, you’ll have a kid who talks to you just like you’re talking to me.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

I can still hear her laughing.

Before the words could evaporate from the air, they banded together and with a whoosh, landed somewhere in my right ovary where they glommed onto the tiny cell that was half of the Once and Future Older Boy. At that moment, my know-it-all 13-year-old brain could not contemplate the power of The Curse. In fact, I promptly forgot about it for the next 34 years until the day Older Boy turned 13. Within 47 seconds of the clock ushering in his teenage years, Older Boy had a mouth on him that wouldn’t quit. Just like his mother.

The Voodoo Whammy Curse had worked.

Of course, I called Mom to share the news and she was rendered speechless, mainly because she was laughing too hard to speak.

But now with Younger Boy now in middle school, too, I’m going to have to call her again. Mom, I don’t know if you planned on hitting a double with The Curse. But rest assured you hit the first one out of the park, so I get it. Please, remove The Curse before Younger Boy becomes a teenager. I’m begging you.

Older Boy was recently zapped with Voodoo Whammy Curse. Denise Malloy is still laughing. She can be reached at dmalloy@q.com.

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