A student came racing into my opinion writing class out of breath, painfully late and apologizing profusely.
He’s always late, but never apologizes like this.
“This time I actually have a good excuse,” he told me, doubled-over and wheezing. (Most of the time it’s cigarettes or needing to feed his cat.) “My mother was yelling at me because I didn’t call home this week.”
That WAS a good one — one of the best I had heard in an awful long time. Gotta’ call your mom, I told him. I didn’t have the heart to tell this poor college kid those phone calls never stop — and that they only get weirder as he gets older.
Case in point: I’m 37 and my mother still calls me — frequently! — at work for all manner of things. I’ve quit trying to get her to stop. It’s futile, and I think it’s going to be easier to get fired for too many personal calls, find a new job and then not give her my new phone number.
Just the other day she called to tell me: “I’m going out to Picolata to rake up pine needles and I thought someone should know in case something happens.”
“Wha-t?!?” I said. My eyelids were fluttering and it felt like someone was playing ping-pong in my head.
My mother has never understood rhetorical questions, so she just repeats herself with more emphasis: “I’M GOING OUT TO PICOLATA TO RAKE UP PINE NEEDLES AND I THOUGHT …”
“No, no,” I said. “Why all the way to Picolata and what exactly is this ‘something’ that could ‘happen’?”
Then it hit me — right as the words left my mouth. I knew what she was up to. Memories of childhood raced back. About how she would load my brother, the dog, some garbage bags and a couple of rakes into her 1978 Ford Thunderbird — the world’s first all-steel parade float — and drive us out to where the middle of nowhere met the land that time forgot. My mother would use pine needles to line her rose beds, cover the paths around our Tampa house and even stuff her pillow. But this required copious amounts of the ground cover, and that meant numerous trips to find fresh supplies.
She would pull off on the side of the road, usually a large cow pasture with towering pines sagging under the weight of the great, green needles. Below them were mounds of the golden prickly strands that stretched across the field like great snow drifts, all ripe for the raking. But there was only one catch: We had no idea who this property belonged to or how that person would view our thievery.
I would keep one eye on the needles and the other out for cops or mad farmers with shotguns screaming, “you can take my cows, but you’ll never take my pine needles!” (It’s a wonder I didn’t go cross-eyed … or that we’re not all in prison.)
We rustled up bags and bags of pine needles until we couldn’t close the trunk, and most of the time we drove back to the civilization with more stacked on our laps, the sharp tips poking us through our shorts.
As I sat in my office on the phone, it occurred to me that after all these years, she was still up to her old tricks, venturing into the wilds of Florida to feed her unquenchable hunger for illegally-got pine needles.
“Why can’t you buy them like normal people?” I asked.
“Brian,” she replied in her “are-you-stupider-than-a-monkey?” voice. “Why would I pay for them when I can rake them for free?”
“Because they’re not free! They belong to someone else. You’re a pine needle thief!”
But it was futile. And I knew this. Just like the kid in my class knew he had to just take his medicine and ultimately answer, “yes, mom.” It doesn’t matter what your age, the correct answer is always, “yes, mom.” So that’s exactly what I did.
Now I beg of you: Should you ever find a strange woman on your property raking up pine needles, please don’t call the cops or chase her with a shotgun. Give me a call at work and we’ll straighten the whole thing out. I’m sure my boss won’t mind.