So I went looking through old emails to see if I had saved any funny ones from mom. It looks like no. One with the subject "Broadway tickets?" opens with "Andrew got 5-10 in Walpole." Ugh. But it does still close xoxo MOM.

OMG, wait. I found the motherlode! I just have to share two with you people:

I'm cc'ed on this one, to someone who was moving to NYC

Hi, [other person] --

Best of luck in your move to NYC. I hope you quickly find a job and that your honey turns out to be all you hope for in a partner!

My daughter, Jesse, just got laid off, so would have time for coffee! She is at [address]. Phone .

Thanks, mom. And then:

Subject: A shocking story!

Hi, J--

Here's something i meant to tell you and forgot. At the XXX conference, I sat at dinner next to a young AA named [name]. She was quite outspoken, unusually so for a Foundation staff-er especially a young one (she won't last long!). Anyway, at one point --and I did NOT start this! --she asked me if i knew about Dan Savage!! Actually, she called his column, Love Savage, and i corrected her. she thought i was amazingly cool for even knowing who he is! Then, she brought up "santorum" as a verb or lower case noun, or something, but then refused to tell me what it meant--finally grossed herself out, I guess! So, I googled it. She said it would be one of the first entries, and she was right. And, it was too gross to describe! Still, I am astonished that she even brought it up!

So, you just never know what kind of conversation you will have at a boring conference!

And, another amazing conversation i had was with the ED of the _____ association. she started telling me how she bugged her daughter to start working toward getting married and has her husband praying with her toward the same end ("two good jobs and one good black man" !) It turns out her daughter is 23!!! I told her to give the woman a break, and then to call you so you would know how good I am!

Hope these give you some chuckles for the day!

xoxox

MOM

Heh.

Snerk.

I get occasional emails from one or the other of the parents that I suspect to an outsider would sound goofy, but it's normal in my family to get emails with subject lines like "lizard tails?tales"

My daughter, Jesse, just got laid off, so would have time for coffee! She is at [address]. Phone .

Awesome!

My mom only emails if several calls go unreturned and/or if she wants to lay down a serious guilt trip about something.

I guess she forwards Obama political messages as well.

Now I miss my mum and want her to send me dippy email. But we do speak more than once a week.

I get maybe one email from mom a month that isn't in response to something I've sent her. Dad, well, his are mostly work related.

I very rarely get e-mail from Mom. One of the last times she sent me one, she got cute and wrote it in that oh-so-annoying text-speak "just to be funny." I sent her back an e-mail demanding that she never do that to me again because I think it's just a horrible way to communicate, and she hasn't. She did call to tell me to lighten up, but I told her she helped to pay for my English degree, so she shouldn't send me stuff like that.

My mom's emails are fairly well-written, but she has a really distressing tendency to bury the lede -- "I've been meaning to ask if you guys know such-and-so from the fencing world. He fences foil and he's a freshman at Yale -- I didn't think you would because of the location, but I figured you probably know people who know him, anyway. His dad is my hand surgeon and I told him I'd ask. Oh, I broke my hand falling off a barstool!"