Shopping with Mom

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• October 17, 2015

Mom was chatting with someone in Bob’s in West Islip, as I dragged my feet, trying to look at clothes.  I was in High School, and abnormally tiny.  Though a teenager, I was still buying clothes from Kids R’ Us, mostly because, kids clothes was all I fit into.  Juniors/teen clothes looked like maternity clothes on me.  I still had a few years before I would get my (very late) growth spurt.  My Mom took me to store after store to try to help me find “cool” clothes that didn’t make me look like I was in elementary school (within a budget, of course).
“This is my younger daughter, Lori,” my mom introduced me.
I smiled, and mumbled, “hello.”
“She looks just like you,” the stranger said.
“She just started High School.”
“High school! She looks so young.”
Way to rub it in, lady.
My mom laughed and talked to her for several minutes before (finally) saying goodbye.
“Who was that?”  I asked.
“I’ve no idea,” my Mom said, “apparently someone I went to high school with.”

I’m really starting to miss running errands with my mom to various stores, despite how many times I’d give her an exasperated sigh, whining to leave.  And not just because she would, at times, treat me to something, be it a shirt or more likely food of some kind.

She misses it too, despite how annoying I can be.  My Mom takes forever in stores.  FOREVER.  When I lived at home, I often volunteered to go grocery shopping.  This is because my Dad would buy the same five items (eggs, milk, orange juice, apples, and celery).  One time, my Dad came home with un-frosted Pop Tarts claiming that “I loved them,” and I was just like, “are you out of your goddamned mind? What are you a communist.  This is America.  We only like frosted Pop Tarts.”  If my mom went grocery shopping, it was like sending her to another dimension to find the holy grail, she’d be gone for hours.  I liked going by myself, but they often didn’t trust me to “only buy items on sale.”  So, my mom and I would go together.  Not only would I ban her from talking to people, but I would snap my fingers or stomp my feet rhythmically, and say, “this is the beat we move to mom, don’t stop moving, walk and grab things off the shelf.  Okay?  Feet always moving.  No talking to people.”  And when she started lollygagging, I’d clap my hands louder and scold her in the aisle, “keep to the tempo, mom, we haven’t got all day.”  She would usually laugh, and call me an ass, and other shoppers would watch in horror/confusion.

My Mom has the best taste in music.  I say this because, we have the exact same taste in music.  Growing up, she shared her vast CD collection, and I enjoyed a wide variety of artists whom I still favor today: The Beatles, The Kinks, Tears for Fears, The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, etc.  Then, as I got older, I shared my alt music, and they’ve become some of her favorites, like Guster, The Shins, Dogs Die in Hot Cars, Beirut, etc.  So, in car rides to store runs, we’d listen to great music, and I’d introduce her to new stuff I was getting into.  She, undoubtedly, would be into it too.  The only draw back of having the same taste in music as your mom, is sometimes she would steal my CDs.  Goddamn it, Mom, where is my Guster cd!

One time, it was shortly after Valentine’s Day.  And there were heart shaped boxes of chocolate on sale for 5 cents.  We bought six.  Because, why not?  I opened a box in the car, and if I bit into a chocolate I didn’t like, I would roll down the window and spit it out.  My Mom made some sort of complaint about my severe lack of lady like behavior (she often did this), which I ignored, and continued to eat and/or spit chocolates out the window.  We were having a serious conversation about something, and I was was spewing my knowledge, seeming very intelligent on the subject.  Then, I was about to spit a chocolate out the window, but I didn’t get the window down fast enough, so as I shot the candy out of my mouth, it ricocheted off the window, then landed in my lap, leaving a nice dark chocolate stain in my crotch.  Mom called me an idiot (or something to that effect) and then we both started hysterically laughing.  It wasn’t even that funny.  But for some reason, we were both out of control, losing our breath, laughing at this really dumb moment.

That’s it, right there.  Those moments where you just look at each other, and burst out laughing.  It happened countless times on our store outings.  We’d be in a store, and we’d both be watching a person or an interaction, then we’d look at each other and crack up laughing.  It was like living in a sitcom: the world was the situational comedy, and we were the laugh track.  Mocking and laughing at every one and everything.

One time, my Mom asked a store worker where something was.  It was a simple request, and the girl struggled with an answer (she was either stoned, or really new and nervous).  But it wasn’t complicated, it was about curtain rods in Bed, Bath & Beyond or something.  Anyway, the girl pointed us in the wrong direction and when we found what we were looking for, my Mom said something like, “good thing we asked Helen Keller over there.”   This is the kind of sick shit that we find funny.  Borderline offensive jokes (or fully offensive jokes, but that’s usually my brother’s department).  Before I was a comic, running errands with my mom was basically an open mic, where my sarcastic comments were always warmly received by my Mother.

I enjoyed dropping ridiculous items in the shopping cart without her looking and incessantly quoting movies (my Mom was always impressed with my ability to remember movie quotes, a skill I’ve always been naturally great at).  I’d stop her in the aisle, “what is your name?  What is your quest?  What is your favorite color?”  Monty Python, Ace Ventura, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, The Goonies, and Grandma’s Boy, anything with Will Farrell, were some of the more heavily quoted movies.  If something could be used as a prop for a spontaneous bit or quoting a movie, I’d use it (this is a trait I undoubtedly got from my Father).  The thing is, despite my quiet disposition, people who know me really well, those I’m fully comfortable with, know me as a complete goof.  It wouldn’t be rare for me to stop in an aisle, and go, “I love this song,” and start doing absurd white girl dance moves, saying to my Mom, “I’m gonna dance like this at the clubs this weekend and find myself a mate.”  She would just roll her eyes at me.  Bystanders probably thought I was on drugs, but I didn’t give a shit who was around, I was just having fun with my Mom.

When we weren’t laughing, we sometimes had serious conversations.  Often times, about the family (both my parents are one of six kids, so it’s a big family, and there’s always some sort of drama).  My Mom sought my advice (when I was a kid, I was like a weird Yoda, and people sought my deep wisdom.  Even at seven years old, adults said talking to me was like talking to a 40 year old.  Also, I wasn’t always so batshit crazy back then.  I was, as my Mom says, “wise beyond my years.”).  My mom was a stay at home mom for nearly 13 years, which is something I’ll always be grateful for, as no amount of money could ever be more valuable than the amount of time my brother, sister, and I got to spend playing and learning with our Mom.   When she returned to the work force, she didn’t have a college education, so her options were limited.  She became a teachers aid in our school district.  She’s retired now, and so I don’t mind saying this: but some teachers are fucking assholes.  My mom, and other teacher’s aids, were often treated as second class humans, and talked down to by teachers.  They were bullied.  My mom is a tough woman (her father was a psycho who thought hitting kids was the answer to everything), but there were times where she would be so upset about the cruelty of the teachers, she didn’t want to go back to school.  My mom is an extremely hard working person, and one of the most selfless people I’ve ever known… hearing this, I just wanted to grab a lead pipe and go to the school and fuck up these teachers class rooms, and knock their teeth out (I guess I have some of her father’s violent tendencies).  What made it worse, was that I knew some of these teachers.  They taught me.  It really upset me.  That people can be like that.  Especially teachers.  You’re not hot shit if you teach middle school.  Get over yourself, and set an example for the future of this country, you stuck up pieces of shit.  I don’t want to knock all teachers here, there are some who are my Mom’s best friends, and they are great people.  It’s just strange.  There were so many times I didn’t want to go back to school, and my Mom had to talk me through it.  Even though I was kind of a weird kid, I was never really bullied.  Now here I was, telling my Mom everything was going to be okay, despite not knowing if it would be.  Despite holding in my rage.

My sister’s pregnancy was accidental.  She was engaged, and the wedding date was planned, but we all knew a baby was going to change everything.  My sister and her soon to be husband didn’t really have their shit together.  When the news came, we were all jarred, wondering what the hell she was going to do.  What can we do to help?  At first, we were anxious and worried, which seems almost ridiculous now, because my nephew is our favorite smiling human on the planet, but when the news first came we were distressed: The wedding had to be changed, health insurance was an issue, financially they needed help.  But as months passed, and my sister’s belly grew, we prepared and calmed.  I was shopping with my Mom for some baby stuff, and there was a young mother with her infant in the shopping cart.  Babies have always been captivated by me.  This is surprising to a lot of people also, probably because of the number of abortion jokes I have, but I actually love kids.  I’ve been a babysitter for years.  Many times in stores, I’ve had little kids I don’t know run up to me, and take my hand, and their Mom’s will be like “that’s so weird, she/he never goes up to strangers.”  Just like being a goof with my Mom, if a baby is staring me down, I just start making faces, and doing little dances and stuff, and the baby starts cracking up.  My Mom then joins, and they baby starts laughing at her too, like we’re some baby whispering comedy team.  My Mom shows me all these cute baby clothes for my soon to be born nephew, and I think that’s when I realized it was going to be okay.  My sister, and my nephew, they were going to be just fine.  Because we have a strong family foundation.  Because of her: my Mom.  She loved being a Mom, and she was going to be a stellar grandma.  And because she learned from the best, my sister would also be a great Mom.  I couldn’t be more proud to say that I was right about that.

(Nephew, above.  He is hilarious, just like his Aunt Lori.)

Shortly before they moved, I was running errands with my sister and baby nephew, entertaining my favorite little guy/being entertained by him.  Basically impersonating Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, I pushed him up and down the aisle, goofing off, and he laughed so hard the whole store could hear him.  We were in Party City, getting balloons for his first birthday.  There was a four foot tall Mickey Mouse balloon, so naturally, I took it in my arms and started dancing with balloon Mickey as my nephew smiled at me.  My sister walked over, and I introduced her to Mickey, and my sister goes, “he’s kind of feeling you up.”  Looking down, I noticed Mickey’s balloon hand was resting on my boob.  “You perv!” I yelled at Mickey, and started slapping him.  Well, my nephew thought this was the funniest goddamn thing he ever saw (and it might have been since he’d only been alive less than a year).  He threw his head back, and was hysterically laughing.  My sister and I started laughing at him.  It was shopping with Mom all over again.  But this time the Mom was my sister.

Now my folks and my sister live in Florida.  Still, whenever I go into a Marshall’s, or a Target, and someone is just being an idiotic human, or there’s something that I could use as a prop to quote a movie, I think about all those times shopping with my Mom.  They all kind of blur together, and I can’t remember what we were buying or even what year it was, but I guess even though what we were buying was the point of the trip, it was never the good part.