My mother recently won an award for being an Outstanding Teacher. She is going to be honored at a banquet. I have to wear a tuxedo.

Sweet.

My mom is awesome.

She grew up in an orphanage in Mexico. She was one of the oldest there, and would pretty much take care of all the rest of the orphans.

My mother wasn't technically an orphan, though.

I hope my mother's father and I never meet each other. It would not be a quiet meeting on my part.

I get very angry when I see parents that do not take care of their children. It makes me think that someday that child will grow up and be as important to someone as my mother is to me.

Sometimes I invite my friends over to my parent's house. I ask first if they have already eaten and if so, I warn them that my mom will make them eat something anyway.

My mother is always concerned that my friends aren't eating enough.

My father and I argue a lot. Not angry arguments, the fervent ones.

When I was little, he would let me read all of his books even though he knew I wouldn't understand them.

He is difficult to argue with because he is Roman Catholic.

Very fervent.

I officially seceded from the family religion when I was seventeen. I think I had resigned myself to my fate of going to Hell by the time I was 8. I didn't understand much of what I was being told in church, but I did understand that rules were being laid down, and I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to not break them. Especially when I learned that just thinking about doing something bad was as terrible as committing the act itself.

There is a lot you can be damned for.

And a lot of it is a whole lot of fun.

When I grew up, us kids never swore around my parents.

Our parents never swore around us.

We should have all just gotten together on the front porch and sworn at things. That would have brought us closer together.

Once my older brother recorded me swearing on a cassette tape and when we were all having dinner he excused himself to the living room, put it in the stereo, and turned the volume to full-blast.

That didn't bring me closer together with my parents. It only brought one of the wooden cooking spoons closer together with my backside.

I wonder now if I would have gotten punished every time that tape was ever played and heard by my parents.

Probably.

There is a lot you can be damned for.