Cindy

Droog

Read Cindy's bio and previous columns

May 5, 2008

My Gift of Dreams: A Mother’s Day Without Misquoting

Mother’s Day is just six short days away, and my dream gifts are actually quite simple.

From my two-year-old, something involving construction paper and stickers would do just fine. The present my newborn got me, which I already know to be two tickets to a Cleveland Indians game, is perfect.

Otherwise, I have everything I could wish for. An amazing family. One more baseball season with my dad. A modest home full of laughter, in a neighborhood with old trees and lots of wagons being pulled. A job I like enough that I still sing in the car on my way to every morning.

Now, if only someone could pull off the following four things, May 11, 2008 could rank right up there with my wedding day.

First and most importantly, please, someone, get Jillian Michaels (the personal trainer from NBC’s The Biggest Loser) off my computer screen. It doesn’t matter if I’m looking up the cure for diaper rash, the color of lava, perusing Newsweek.com for the election coverage I missed during last night’s crying fit or getting my daily 7:30 a.m. dose of laughter from funnyordie.com so I can smile no matter what my workday throws at me.

Wherever I am online, there she is.

Her six-pack abs, perfect in low-slung military print khakis. You know, for those times when she’s hiding in the forest and needs to kick-box an oncoming bear. A tiny black sports bra that wouldn’t have fit me when I was 14, much less after nursing two kids.

I wonder. Did her media buying team sit in a conference room, behind closed doors, and ask themselves: “Where do working moms, who write weekly columns, and are obsessed with news and comedy, go online? And how best can we torture them?” They did a great job. For Mother’s Day, I just need someone to undo it.

Second, it would make me so happy if people would simply stop misquoting the movie Field of Dreams. I love this movie, and I don’t see why it’s too much to ask for people to erase the phrase, “If you build it, they will come” from their vocabularies. I heard it at work last week. I even read it in a headline.

People, if you remember nothing else you read today, remember this. The actual quote from the movie is, “If you build it, he will come.” He. Not they. He. Ray Kinsella’s Dad. Shoeless Joe Jackson. Important people. Not your coworkers who don’t attend meetings unless you build a buffet. Not your customers who don’t love you anymore, so you’ve built a lame loyalty program.

Just find another quote, and make this baseball-loving mom even more satisfied with life.

Third, if there is anyone out there who – cheaply, quickly and without tearing down my entire house – can free the birds (or squirrels; or bats; or mice; we’re not really sure which) that live in my walls, I would be forever grateful.

These little animals are busy, often playing games like Ring around the Pipelines, or Hide and Go Bang the Heat Registers, in the middle of the night. They live in the wall behind our bed, and only strike when we’ve just fallen asleep.

One quote we got to free them was a few grand. We decided to get some car repairs instead, as we heard brakes were kind of important when transporting kids. My brother-in-law would do it for free, as long as we didn’t need that wall for a month, while he tackled it as an every-other-Saturday side job. We considered that, but opted to leave peanut butter and crackers on the roof instead, coaxing them out. It works for getting toddlers inside, why not for getting rodents outside? 

My final wish for Mother’s Day would be that the new Victoria’s Secret Memory Bra actually had a photographic memory. Show it my picture from 10 years ago, and bam! Put it on, and relive perky history.

Instead, I guess I’ll have to call Jillian Michaels. If I hire her to help me achieve my final wish, perhaps she can fire her media firm, and help me with my first. After all, two out of four ain’t bad.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # CD094. Request permission to publish here.