Apparently, it is now the fashion to send complaints about one’s superiors to the Op-Ed sections of newspapers for publication. Anonymously!
Perhaps this explains why similar materials have now been sent to “The Lighter Side.” The following is a transcript of an audio file we recently received:
Speaker Number One: The world needs to know about the massive injustices and mind-boggling incompetence of the usual author of this column.
We wish to reassure you, her readers, that there are indeed “adults in the room” who are working to thwart and frustrate her every move.
I can say this quite literally, having become an adult in the eyes of the law just weeks ago, myself. Although of course I am not literally “in the room” at the moment, having gone back to college.
Still, there is much to address. For example, she never gets my name right! She’s known me all my life — she gave me that name, for Pete’s sake — why can’t she get it right? And yet, every time she calls for me, she says my brother’s name first!
“You know what?” says someone we shall call Speaker Two. “She does that to me, too!”
“Hey, this is my anonymous letter — get out of here and make your own! Another thing — I was always the one who had to take out the trash!”
“Well, I can’t help it if I was in college while you were still in high school!”
“All I’m saying is, you owe me! But back on topic — another serious matter is how all the plants in the garden cry out for relief from our mother’s malicious neglect. We lost most of the raspberry bushes because she refused to water them….”
“It was a weather alert!” interrupts yet another Speaker, Number Three. “It wasn’t safe to go out there! And sweetie, I’m glad we’re all on this together because I need to break it to you gently, it might be too late for the cherry tree — we might have to take it out.”
“I keep telling you, Mom, it’s a plum tree!”
“Well, they look like cherries to me.”
A fourth voice says: “Boys, let’s move on here. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Judy, you promised to stay out of this!”
“I know. But sometimes I just have to defend myself!”
“My turn now,” says Speaker Two. “She keeps erasing my shows! Every time I come home, she’s obliterated another batch from the DVR. And for what? Murder mysteries? How many shows about dead people can one person watch?”
“I don’t know, sweetie, you tell me! At least in my shows, the corpses stay dead! They don’t get up and start walking!”
“Oh, that reminds me — whenever I do watch a show with you, Mom, you keep pausing it to look up the actors!”
“That’s because I can’t remember where I remember them from.”
“It’s so annoying! As for remembering things — it’s hopeless! She never knows where anything is — like her glasses! We gave her fancy glasses strings, every Mother’s Day for years, but she never used them. She’d just leave her glasses on the microwave, or in the bathroom, or right on top of her head! Then she’d come in demanding, ‘Have you seen my glasses? I can’t find them.’”
“‘They’re right on your head,’ we kept telling her — but she never learned. Of course, it might be easier to find things in that house if she ever got rid of stuff.”
“I know,” says Speaker One, who by this time you have probably figured out is the younger brother. “I kept trying to sneak things she never uses out of the house. Like when I said I needed pots and pans — for my dorm room. But there’s not much I can do about books. She notices when I take those!”
“I know, I tried that, too,” says Speaker Two. “Here’s another thing. Her knee-jerk anti-technology bias deprived us both of years of video games, and keeping up with friends. And she doesn’t have the slightest understanding of how cell phones work. ‘I’ll keep this call short,’ she says, ‘I don’t want to run up your bill.’
“‘It’s free, Mom,’ I keep telling her.”
“‘That can’t possibly be true,’ she answers.”
The tape stops abruptly at this point.
We have agreed to anonymity for all who submitted complaints. Nevertheless, it seems fair to observe, in the words of Shakespeare, “Oh, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless ‘adult in the room.'” Especially when you have raised them to adulthood, yourself!
