And the award goes to.........

Jenni (my daughter) often talks about the fact that her daughter, Vika, is a bit of a drama queen. Well, let me tell you, folks - she learned from the finest. And, I must admit, I had many moments of high drama when I was a child - especially during those glorious teen years. If my Mom were still alive, I'm quite sure she would have plenty of stories to tell. So this is probably a karma thing.

Here are two of my favorite Jenni memories.

When the kids were 10-ish, we were living in Tucson and decided to take a little trip to Bisbee and Tombstone. I was divorced at the time so it was just the three of us. When we got to Tombstone, we had one of those old time pictures taken of us - all dressed in 1890's garb (I think Jenni has the photo at her house). After that, we decided to have lunch. We placed our order and Joedy decided he needed to go to the bathroom. So he headed that way and I decided to go across the street to get information on the silver mine tour in case we could squeeze that in after lunch. Jenni stayed at the table.

When we got back to the table, Jenni was almost in tears. She has completely convinced herself that Joedy and I had a secret arrangement to "pretend" he was going to the bathroom and I was getting tour information - when in reality we were going to meet outside and drive back to Tucson. Leaving her all alone in the restaurant - not to mention sticking her with the bill! I asked her if she noticed that I had left my purse on my chair - why would I leave without my purse? She figured I left it as a ploy so she wouldn't de-code our scheme too quickly. But, she said, at least she had the old time photo we had just taken to remember us by.........

My brother was a big note writer when he was a kid. Always slipping pieces of paper under my Mom's door asking a question and giving her a Yes and No box to check. Jenni followed in his footsteps. My favorite note of hers is this one. In case you can't read it, I've put the text below. Please note that we did NOT have guns in the house so I don't know where she came up with that idea!! As a footnote, the kids did make up and Jenni surrendered from her self-imposed exhile to have dinner with us.

Dear Mom
I am not going to come out of my room

until Joedy shapes up!!
He punched me in the face and really knows

how to make a person wish they had never been born,

and until you have a talk with him, bring me my
dinner at 8:00.

P.S. if you have a gun give it to me, I wanna kill myself.

Hurt, Jenni

We all have stories about our daughters, and our mothers all have stories about us. Can't wait until Vika has kids and continues the family tradition of drama.