A Little Commentary From My Mother

My mom is amazing. Anything electronically more complicated than a light switch is automatically delegated to my father, the engineer. However, somehow she has discovered email. She checks it religiously, and much to everyone's chagrin, she has become that master of "the forward".

Many a time she has forwarded me -and all her friends- an email about not parking next to vans because someone could jump out and kidnap you. She has also forwarded an email about the Arachnis gluteus or "butt spider" that lives in airplane bathrooms. I have in turn continually tried to introduce her to Snopes.com, but that's another step and it's so much easier to just forward away. Hooray! Below is my mom's latest forward, which I'm sure was not intended as any sort of commentary on my life. Behold:

Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they sometimes take the apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy. The apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're amazing. They just have to wait for the right person to come along, the one who is brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.

Now Men.... Men are like a fine wine. They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the shit out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

Share this with all the good apples you know

It's like we're not even related. This is the sort of folksy blah blah bull shit that makes bile rise up in the back of my throat and makes me itch all over. This sort of writing does a disservice to men, women, and anyone with eyes who can read - and yet somehow my mom seems to think I would enjoy this. It's as though she's asking "Would you like a cat sweatshirt with your lady poem?"

I want to write my mother back:

Dear Mom,

Thanks for the *hilarious* forward. However, after careful consideration, I don't think I'm even on this metaphorical tree. I think I'm a heavy apple, one that's fallen off the tree and is rotting on the ground somewhere and then is stomped on by men going for the low hanging apples. Even if I were on the tree, what's wrong with being low hanging fruit? That seems discriminatory. Why are women always hating on other women? And hey, maybe I'm just an apple in the middle of the tree waiting for the man who'll only climb halfway up the tree before he gets tired and decides he'd rather just grab an apple and get a beer instead of heading all the way to the top of the tree. After all, maybe the guy who climbs to the top of the tree could see another tree from that vantage point and being an ambitious go-getter decides to go get some apples from that tree instead of my tree. What do you think?

Love,
Your Daughter


But that seems just a tad negative.