i like presents

ask anyone. me and presents go waaaaay back. i love them. my mother brings me presents whether she visits here or i visit there. of course, due to my mother's undying devotion to the 99 cent store, and her uncanny ability to repeatedly buy the same item over and over with no recollection of having bought it before, i tend to get a lot of the same presents over and over.

i picture her in the 99 cent store... maybe not really going every day, of course. that would be excessive. but maybe she goes in every other day. and every other day as she goes in she looks at the array of unchanging junk and crap that lay before her, all at the fabulously low price of 99 cents.

she goes through, picking things up... thinking about her friends and her family. people she wants to give these tiny pieces of plastic junk from taiwan to. i also see a mountain of darth maul pens. left over from a huge overestimation of the popularity of 1, star wars episode 1, 2, darth maul, and 3, the number of pens the american public could possibly want or need of darth maul. the 99 cent store, and now my mother, seems to have an unending supply of these sinister red and black pens.

what you have to understand is that my parents really are great people. they may not understand this whole goth thing, but in their own way they try to be supportive. mom sees something dark, maybe sort of sinister, she associates it with goths and brings it immediately to me or my husband ryan. remember the gargoyles cartoon? i never even saw an episode, but i had a gargoyle puppet. did i go see the disney version of "the hunchback of notre dame"? nope. do i have nearly every collectible from it? i sure do.

so on my last visit to my parents' place, we went first to my father's store in spring. we hung around there for a while and then my mother and i agreed to head off to Spec's and then head to their house. driving back from Spec's i mentioned that ryan and i were looking forward to getting our darth maul pen. her jaw dropped as if i'd just told her her most secret childhood story in detail.

"HOW DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE GETTING A DARTH MAUL PEN?!?!" she gasped.

"well, based on the fact that every other time i've seen you lately i've gotten one, i just kind of figured..." i answered, a little unsure if she was just playing around.

suddenly i started thinking about my betta fish. how you're not supposed to feel bad for them being in those small bowls because they only have a 2-second memory. every circle around the bowl is a new adventure for them. and they're happy that way.