Every mother has to do it. Every mother hates doing it. And ours was no exception. What I’m referring to is when a mother has to scold her children for something they’ve done wrong.
Most mothers like to carry the belief that their children are perfect little angels who can do no wrong, and they live in that blissful world of ignorance until they’re met face-to-face with the dark evil that resides within the heart of all children.
Sometimes it only takes one or two confrontations with this evil for the mother to snap and transform into the alternate, believer-in-punishment mother that has to take control.
Sometimes, it takes a bit more “prodding” from the children. It’s usually when it takes a bit more prodding, however, the final result is more explosive than it is when it only takes one or two confrontations.
Basically, picture your mother as a volcano that’s been dormant for hundreds of years. Before you know it, your mom is Vesuvius, and you’re Pompeii.
Now most children are aware that the father is the primary dealer of punishment when it comes to misbehavior. As a result, most children tend to behave themselves more appropriately when their father is present, and rampage around when dad’s not looking.
Little Brother and I didn’t really have that option too often. Both of our parents were around most of the time. So mom never had to revert to that alternate personality that lies dormant in all mothers.
However, there were rare occasions where dad would be out for some reason or another, and we were left alone with mom.
We should have never been left alone with mom.
We were monsters.
Actually, looking back on things, we never should’ve been left alone in general. If you’ve read Microwaves Beware Part 2 you’ll know exactly what I mean. And there are many more stories within that category, but I’ll write about those at some other point.
Little Brother and I knew for a fact that when dad was gone, we could get away with murder. We pushed mom’s limits often. We’d run around the house like crazy little leprechauns on crack.
We’d slide down the stairs in laundry baskets.
Make messes that encompassed the entirety of the house and refuse to clean it up.
And pretty much any other form of completely ignoring the authority our mother had over us.
It was during these times that our mother would try to be the good, calm mother that she is, and talk us down peacefully. However, after continued ignorance from our end, mom would revert to the preinstalled programming that all mothers carry.
Little Brother and I, who were still young and unfamiliar with the ways women work, were always startled by this new, in-control mom who would yell and tell us what to do.
We were scared of this new entity that wasn’t easy to manipulate and made us clean up the messes we’d made.
All we knew was that this wasn’t our real mother.
This physically identical copy had replaced our mother during a split second window in which we weren’t fully paying attention.
We called her…Robot Mama.
Robot Mama yelled and stomped around the house, telling us that it was our fault she was like this, telling us that it was our fault she was yelling.
Our belief in Robot Mama evolved and became so real that Little Brother and I began having nightmares about this evil, mechanical entity.
I remember one night in specific that Little Brother woke up crying because, in his nightmare, he had opened the closet in our house where the vacuum was kept, and found the robotic twin of our mom next to the vacuum, standing there silently, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
It wasn’t long after his retelling of this nightmare that I too began having nightmares of my own, one repeating nightmare, where I would be running from Robot Mama as she clomped around the house. Somehow in my dream I would manage to sneak around behind her, and the sight that awaited me was a terrifying one. Right there, in the middle of her back, was a giant Duracell or Energizer battery, powering the creature.
Being awaked from these dreams by our mother was usually a chaotic experience. We were already upset, but seeing our mother immediately after and not knowing if she was the real mom or the mechanized monster, was absolutely terrifying.
As we got older, the appearances of Robot Mama became more and more scarce. Whether that’s because of us behaving more, our mother becoming more acclimated to our antics, or a combination of both, I can’t say.
However I’d like to believe that it was because Robot Mama’s battery died and real mom got rid of her in a garage sale.
