I had the meanest mother in the world. While other kids ate candy for breakfast, I had to have cereal, eggs and toast. When others had Cokes and candy for lunch , I had to eat a sandwich. As you can guess, my supper was different than the other kids' also.
But at least I was not alone in my suffering. My two brothers had the same mean mother I did.
My mother insisted upon knowing where we were all the time. You'd think we were on a chain gang. She had to know who our friends were and what we were doing. She insisted. If we said we'd be gone an hour, that we best gone and hour or less, not one hour and one minute. I am almost ashamed to admit it, but she actually struck us. Not once, but each time we did as we pleased. Can you imagine someone actually hitting a child because she disobeyed? Now you can begin to see how mean she was.
The worst is yet to come. We had to be in bed by nine each night and up early the next morning. We could never sleep until noon like our friends. So while they slept my mother had the nerve to break the child labor law. She made us work. We had to wash dishes, make the beds, learn to cook and all sort of cruel things. I believe she laid awake night thinking of mean things to do to us.
She always insisted upon our telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth even if it killed us...and it nearly did.
By the time we were teenagers, she was much worse and wiser and our lives became even more unbearable. None of this tooting the horn of the car for us to come running. She embarrased us to no end by making our dates and friends come to the door and get us. I forgot to mention: while my friends were dating at the mature age of 12 or 13, my old fashioned mother refused to let me date until the age of 15 or 16. Fifteen, that is, if you date only to go to a school function and that was maybe twice a year.
My mother was a complete failure as a mother. None of us had even been arrested or beaten his mate. Each of my brothers served his time in the service of his country. And whom do we have to blame for the terrible way we turned out? You are right, our mean mother. Look at all the things we missed. We never got to march in a protect parade, not to take part in a riot, burn our draft card and a million and one things our friends did. She forced us to grow up into God-fearing, educated, honest adults.
Using this as a background I am trying to raise my three children. I stand a little taller and am filled with pride when my children call me mean.
Because you see, I thank God he gave me THE MEANEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD.
So as a step of
faith, I now give create where create is told to me is due.
Please visit this authors webpage at
I have had this on my page from almost my first day of creating web pages in 1996. The first time I saw
it was in a column in the "Fort Worth Star Telegram", a few years later in a little classified paper called
"The Greensheet" since it was author unknown and therefore no copywrite I decided to type it up and put it on
my webpage after I learned how to do them. It is a lot like some things my mother wrote when she was younger
and since it also sounds like it from family stories, I did. It has been here for a while. On November 10, 1998, I
received a letter from the author.
