I’m a sucker for those goofy Internet quizzes that answer burning questions such as “What Disney princess are you?” or “What state should you live in?” After clicking to answer a variety of nonsensical questions or choosing which picture you like best from an odd assortment, these digital Rorschach tests supposedly give you great insight. They tell you what the theme song for your life should be or which character on the Golden Girls sitcom you most closely resemble or whether you are a girlygirl or a tomboy.
These little personality tests remind me of the quizzes that used to be found in magazines. Taking those were more work. You had to jot down your answers—a., b., c., or d.—and then add to get your score. Once you tallied the points for each a., b., or c., etc., you had the score that would answer the burning question.
Seventeen magazine had quizzes every month, giving readers the chance to find out if her soulmate was Davy Jones of The Monkees or David Cassidy of The Partridge Family. As I got older, I graduated to quizzes in Redbook or Cosmopolitan. Quizzes that asked important questions such as “What career should you have?” or “How compatible are you and your sweetheart?”
I guess I like the silly cyber quizzes because I grew up on those magazine questions. And they are fun conversation starters. A friend recently shared a quiz asking “How bad were you as a child?” It was interesting to see who was 20 percent, 50 percent and 70 percent “bad.”
I took that test with some trepidation. I knew I wasn’t a very good kid. I was surprised when the results said I was 40 percent “bad.”
That is when I had an interesting conversation with my mother, who saw the results on Facebook. When I saw the 40 percent, I stated that I didn’t agree. I thought I should have been much higher on the “bad” scale. Mom, bless her heart, has selective memory. She said I was a good kid.
She is partially right, I was a good kid in elementary school and even into junior high. I was terribly shy and wanted nothing more than to shrink into the background with a book. So, aside from being a poor math student, I was a very well-behaved child.
But when I hit high school, I think I was horrible. I look at some of the journals I kept from that era and apparently the only word in my vocabulary was stupid. School was stupid. Confirmation classes were stupid. My sister was stupid. Life was stupid.
And, unfortunately, as friends from high school know, I really did misbehave. I was part of the snotty teenage crowd that hid in the woods behind the school and smoked cigarettes. I skipped school and I smarted off in class. My best friend and I snuck out of our junior-senior banquet after dinner and before the speaker because we didn’t want to be bored. There’s more, but I don’t need to tell on myself.
But what is important, what is wonderful, is that my mom was—and is—able to overlook it all. When I brought home mid-quarter slips showing failing grades or was got caught misbehaving, she didn’t scream and holler. She didn’t lecture too much. She simply shook her head and gave me “the look.”
“The look” let me know she was disappointed in whatever I had done. But it also let me know that she saw past the bad behavior. It let me know that she knew I could—and would someday—do better. Thanks for the love and support and the selective memory, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day!
A mother is not a
person to lean on, but a
person to make leaning
unnecessary.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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