As most of you folks know, I could use some professional help. Recently, my two daughters set about trying to ‘fix me’. They introduced me to the joys of sweaty work-outs and mindless circling around a track.
They turned my life inside-out and upside down. But it was all for a good purpose.
“See how much things have changed, Mom?” said my youngest daughter as we entered the SPA/Tanning Salon where she works. “I’m not embarrassed any more! I take you out in public now.”
“A miracle, indeed!” I said.
“And now,” Mystia continued. “I want you to try really hard to be a hip, young mom, today…OK?”
“Oh, I’m hip all right,” I said. “I still need to lose about 10 pounds of it.”
“Shhh!” Mystia said. “They’ll hear you.” She waved cheerily at her friends sitting nearby, and hurried me toward the tanning booth.
“Mystia….” I said as we rounded a corner. “I don’t want my sunspots to get worse in the tanning booth. Can I drape something over my arms while I’m tanning? Maybe some toilet paper or something?”
“Absolutely not!” she said. “There is NO toilet paper inside the tanning room, Mother!” Opening a door, she propelled me inside.
A dark coffin-like object sat in the middle of the small room. It was an elaborate looking place with ornate woodwork and fine decor. It looked just like a viewing room at the morgue except for the various signs posted around the room.
“Danger!” they said. “Read instructions carefully before using. Use eye protection at all times!”
I felt my uneasiness mount. “Is this thing safe?”
“Of course it’s safe!’ Mystia said. “I use it all the time, Mom. Just don’t read the Warnings!”
She began pushing buttons on the ominous-looking coffin in the middle of the room. “I’m turning it on for you now. You climb inside when I’m gone. You’ll be fine. It’s just like tanning in the sunlight, Mom. You’ll see.”
Lights flashed. I felt blinded by laser beams. The room was filled with an eerie blue brilliance. It was like the brightness on Resurrection Morn.
Then warning beepers and buzzers started going off loudly. “This is horrible!” I said. “Look what it says right there on that sign! It says: ‘Danger! Use eye protection at all times!’”
“Don’t holler!” she said. “What are all my friends going to think?” She shoved a towel at me and turned to go.
“Don’t leave me!” I said. “I’m scared.”
But she did leave me. She walked straight out of the room without a backward glance.
The coffin machine was humming away ominously. I was wasting time…and good money, too. I had to do something.
I looked around. There was no toilet paper in here to drape over my arms, just like Mystia had said. I’d have to use something else. I grabbed a couple of towels to put over my sun-spots, and then quickly shed everything except for my swimsuit.
Climbing inside the coffin, I stuck the eye-goggles on my face and lay down like a dying person awaiting my fate.
It wasn’t long before I felt it. A dizzy, fizzy feeling all over my body. Mystia had been wrong. It wasn’t like sunlight at all. I could feel myself being bombarded with rays. It wasn’t my imagination.
The horror of it all overwhelmed me. Here I was inside of a microwave oven, cooking myself like a prostrate zucchini in a bikini. There were a million electro-megavolts going through my body. Me…! A gal who doesn’t like dental X-rays. Who stands back ten feet while using a microwave oven.
What the heck was I doing?
I threw back the lid of the coffin and leaped out. The eye-goggles and arm-towels fell off like grave clothes on Resurrection Morn. Blue laser beams filled the room with an eerie brilliance.
I closed the lid of the coffin with a bang. I was done with this foolishness. Done with Society and all its nonsense!
I pulled on my clothes and hurried outside. My daughter was waiting for me.
“That’s it!” I said. “No more of this business. I feel like a baked zucchini in a bikini!”
Mystia hustled me outside and into the car. “It does no good to try to help you,” she said. “No good at all! I give up…!”
And so you see, folks. That’s how it all went down between a modern Miss and her mortifying Mama.
My makeover ended then and there—at least as far as my youngest daughter was concerned. (…My other daughter still had a few tricks up her sleeve, but I’ll have to tell you about that next month!)
It merely goes to show that the old saying is still true today: “You can take a Mama out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the Mama”
Hope you all have a Happy Mother’s Day!
Adventuring With Vic 
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