My daughter sent me this great card for Mother's Day, which was yesterday. I hope it was a lovely day all around. Anyway, her card got me to thinking. However loving and forgiving our children may be some of us are too neurotic, vain, and self-centered to meet the standard of the Good Mother. It is embarrassing for both the children and us, the bad mothers, to go through the motions of Mother's Day, knowing that the honors are not exactly meant or deserved. Therefore, with an end to restoring integrity all around, I hereby declare that, henceforth, the second Monday of May will be known as Bad Mother's Day. From now on this is our day, we Bad Mothers, to do with as we please. And for good measure, because enough is never enough, I threw in the rights and privileges of Blue Monday [¹] , such as calling in sick and sighing a lot.
Naturally, many good children of bad mothers will not want to send their bad mothers Bad Mother's Day cards, irregardless of what a crap head she is. Not to worry. If you don't send one, it will just go to prove how terribly unappreciated we are. All the more reason for The DAY.
With the help of the troupe here at the Invisible Theatre, I threw together this little video to launch the holiday. In keeping with the theme, it's a variation of the old saying, "the hand that rocks the cradle" merged with the idea that, indeed, "it is never too late." I don't want any flack over the fact that a man does the lyrics. It's about time one of them kicks in. If you'd had a husband like this, you'd have been a bad mother too.
The quality of this video is pretty bad but, hell, what can you expect on Bad Mother's Day? Like I tell my kids, I tired. Anyway, the sound track is good, at least I think so and that's what matters. So sit back and enjoy William Shatner doing "That's Me Trying" from his never a hit album, "Has Been".
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What? So you think something as important as Bad Mother's Day doesn't deserve footnotes?
[¹] The much ridiculed work of Cliff Arnall, former part-time tutor at Cardiff University explains a lot. Cardiff University distanced themselves from Arnall, but I stand by his efforts to render in mathematical terms such important concepts as Blue Monday.
Based on Cliff's work, I got my little brother (who actually is a scientist) to whip up a formula for Blue Monday Bad Mother's Day. I call it the BMBMD Effect.
... where weather (W) PLUS debt (D) MINUS ability to pay (d) MULTIPLIED BY THE time since her birthday (T), the combined time of all previous Bad Mother's Days (T¹) and the time since blowing her latest New Year’s resolutions (Q) DIVIDED BY Mommie's massive need to be right (M) MULTIPLIED BY her never ending need for appreciation (Na) EQUALS a very bad Blue Monday Bad Mother's Day.
So be a good kid and do something nice for your mother or not. Hop to it.
bad mother's day William Shatner Has Been cradle Blue Monday equations BMDMD Effect