Happy Batday
Alternate post title: Picking on My Mom, Volume 472.
Batman Begins is scheduled to open in the US on Friday, June 17th. We are excited about this because we’re totally and completely down with Batman, and from all accounts, this film is looking pretty good. Also, Christian Bale.
June 17th is also significant because it’s my mother’s birthday. So the other day, Ginny’s all, “Hey Mom, let’s go see Batman Begins for your birthday.”
“No! I hate Batman!” was the response.
After we got all indignant and how can you hate BATMAN?, I’m like, “What, you don’t want a Batman birthday party? With Batman cups and Batman plates and a Batman tablecloth?”
“No!” Mom said. “I hate Batman! You should have a Wizard of Oz birthday party!” (The Wizard of Oz is her favorite movie and collector obsession.)
When we pointed out that a Wizard of Oz birthday party would be totally stupid, since Batman Begins is what’s opening on her birthday, she said that we had to have the kind of party she wanted because it’s HER BIRTHDAY. But I pointed out that when other people are having a surprise party for you, you don’t get any say in what the party theme is going to be, so maybe we’d just do that.
And then I was like, “Oooh, Batman cake.”
And my mom’s getting progressively more flustered and hilarious, as is her way, all, “I don’t want a Batman birthday party and I won’t come to a Batman birthday party and I HATE BATMAN!”
(By the way, getting your mom to say, out loud, “I don’t want a Batman birthday party” might just be the funniest thing ever. Try it.)
So we’re totally planning a Batman birthday party for my mom, complete with Batman plates and Batman cups and Batman napkins and a Batman tablecloth. And a Batman cake. And a Batman centerpiece. Ooh, and did you know you can get Batman heads for everyone in the party to wear? And foam Batarangs?
We are so doing this. And we remind my mom about it approximately twice a day, if for no other reason than to see her get all mad and yell that she doesn’t want a Batman birthday party.
Which is too bad, because that’s exactly what she’s going to get.
Thanks to your awesome camera-phone photography, I have a nice image in my head of your mom growing increasingly apoplectic as her offspring conspire to torment her on HER BIRTHDAY. I also realize that lately I have been using caps to stress certain things, a habit I vowed I would never adopt, and that most of the things I am stressing seem to fall at the END OF SENTENCES. So it looks like maybe I hit the caps lock button just as I was finishing my thought. Speaking of thoughts, I’m surprised you didn’t mention that much of “Batman Begins” was filmed in CHICAGO.
AWESOME.
Another mom-slash-bat anecdote:
My grandparents keep a cooler out on their covered back porch (because there’s not enough room in any refrigerator for the amount of beer we go through, and also because, in Ohio, at Christmas, a back porch is colder than a refrigerator.) One Christmas, everyone had to go without beer because a bat had made it past the screen door barrier and onto the porch, and no one wanted to risk trying to shoo it back outside.
I told my mom that, no, I would not be getting her a drink because there was a bat on the loose, and she looked at me and said, with all seriousness, “Oooh, wouldn’t it be scary if that bat turned into Tom Hanks?”
Now, it took me a minute to figure out that she must have meant Tom Cruise, who starred in “Interview With A Vampire,” a movie that, incidentally, did not involve any man-to-bat transformations. But, boy, once I made that connection, there was (and has yet been) no end to the ridicule.
Tormenting your mother is easy when all it involves is making a flapping bat out of your hands and drawling, “Life is like a box of chocolates.”
batman used to reside in my pants. In England, they’d insist that he was the fabric of my pants.
in any case, I’ve got a minute here – and here I go…
“Which is too bad, because that’s exactly what she’s going to get.”
Do you plan to have any daughters yourself someday?…
this post cracks me up.
and then i realize you are serious and it still cracks me up, with a bit of “ouch” on the side.
Don’t forget to invite THIS GUY