Zazu Special: I Am Only Going to Explain This One More Time

As always, Zazu rules…

I have a married son soon to be the same age as I.  He is seriously responsible.  He and his wife have been together 12 years.  They have a nice home and a really good relationship.  I think that is why we have to play out this drama every so often.

Periodically he likes to sit me down to have “the talk”.  The where he explains to me I need to find someone to spend my old age with.  The he will go on and explain why.  He tells me he worries about me being alone.  Personally I think he is just afraid I might want to come live with him at some point.  He doesn’t know I am way more afraid that he will want me to come live with him some day than I am that I will actually want to do something that foolish.  It have nightmares just thinking about the possibility that he thinks he might actually be able to boss me around some day.

Since these little talks usually happen around the holiday dinner table my other sons are present too but not worried.  They don’t live in nice houses.  The youngest, our resident smartass, does live in a fashionable suburb of Atlanta but rents the house with about six other guys.  I wonder what the neighbors think of the smell of sweat socks and beer that must permeate the entire lot.  The other one lives in a van down by the river, and is too happily laid back to sweat over my future.

So they slump down in their chairs and listen but don’t say much. They might roll their eyes a bit, but they know this doesn’t concern them.  They know no old ladies (me) will ever ask to come live with them.

I never know what triggers it but, out of the blue, the talk always starts off like this:

“Mom, you really need to find someone.”

“Why?”

“You don’t need to be alone.”

“I am not alone.  I have 5 cats and 3 dogs.  I don’t even get to go pee by myself.”

“That is not what I mean and you know it.”

“I am really OK. “

“For now.”

“Hey, I like my life the way it is.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I like being able to go where I want and do what I want, when I want, and if I want.”

“But you need someone to take care of you!”

If you ask me this means he is worried that I might want him to come fix things around my house for me.  After all, he is pretty handy and he has nice tools.  I always make sure I buy him some nice new do-dad every Christmas.

“Look son, there are good reasons I don’t ever want to get hooked up again.”

“Yeah, I know.  You are down on all men.”

“No I’m not.  Just the ones I gave birth to.”

“Then why aren’t you interesting in finding anyone?”

This is where I trot out the logical.  Yes logic, and don’t think it is feminine logic.  Logic is logic.  Everyone should be able to understand logic; even my son.  I’ve always been very good at logic. Probably one of the reasons I am single.

“Look son, consider the statistics.  To start with, more girls than boys are born and the girls live longer.  So that means over half of the population at any given time is not even male.  Half of the males are not even straight.  Out of the straight half, half of them are too young for me and half of them are too old.  Of the half that is in my age group, half of them are probably married.  I am not home wrecker.  Half of the ones that are left are divorced.  There is at least one good reason why they are divorced.  The other half were probably never married.  There is usually more than one good reason why no one would marry them.  That leaves only the widowers.  Half of them probably sent the wife in an early grave.  The other half would have been divorced if their wives had lived long enough.  Of the half that are widowers who were good husbands, half of them probably have kids.  I don’t want kids.  I have too many of those already.  So that only leaves me a few middle aged guys who don’t love mama best, never had kids, and never killed their wives.  How many of those do you think are hot or even have hair?  Maybe one and I can assure you, he doesn’t even live anywhere near here.  So you see the statistics are not in my favor.  You can’t argue with statistics.”

I wait a minute while he is thinking up his reply.  To forestall any snappy come back, I pull out the big guns.

“So I guess I have to stay single…”

“No you don’t.”

“…unless you want me to become a lesbian.  I always said I’d like a wife – someone to cook and clean and tell me how great I am.”

He gives me the look.  My son, the liberal, can’t even picture having a gay mom.

“Mom, that is just a bunch of rationalization!”

Silently I think to myself he could be right about that.  My first skill is logic but my second is rationalizing.

“At your age, you know that you don’t have to get married to have a “relationship”.”  He ends with air quotes.

“I know that!”

“Then, why won’t you just go out with someone?”

The youngest, Mr. Smartass, pipes up for the first time.  “Because no one will ask her.”