The Traditional Mother's Day Games and Activities at Our House

Mother's day is a celebration of love and praise for those brave beings who chose to go through the process of having a basketball size being evolve inside their bodies even though they were well aware of the fact that after nine or ten months that basketball would undoubtedly choose to exit in the most inconvenient manner conceivable. For that reason, and that reason alone, Mothers throughout history deserve the celebration that we have set aside for them. They are nothing less than the most fearless and blessed creatures on the face of this planet and any other planet where those of similar creation might exist.

Little brothers, on the other hand are not so worthy. It was with that in mind that I came up with the ritual Mother's Day torment that became such an engrained and delightful part of Mother's day in our home. Simple enough, it involved me simply passing by my little brother while he was up early preparing his Mother's Day gift for our blessed Mother, and, as I passed, whispering a phrase like, "Is that for my Mother, or yours?"
Another good phrase might have been, "That is really nice. Too bad your Mom couldn't be here to enjoy it."

Of course, any words like the ones I just mentioned would cause my little brother to inquire, "What do you mean?"

And, of course, that opened the door for my nearly tearful confession to my sibling that while the rest of us (there were seven of us total - five older than him and one younger) had been born from the womb of the saint he now referred to as his Mother, it was a well known fact among us, and a well kept secret from his ears, that he had been left on our doorstep by a family that had an uncanny resemblance to the perfect television family known as the Brady Bunch. Furthermore, I would continue to espouse the notion that had it not been for a flat tire and an unforeseen snowstorm and blizzard that caused the perfect family of his dreams to believe that their beloved baby boy (him) might be the only one to survive if they left him in the care of our weird-functional ethnic Jewish house of chaos, he would have grown up with an ideal Southern California family with members who were really well adjusted and never raised their voices. Oh, and they had tuna sandwiches with cherry Kool-Aid every day for lunch. And their dad had a job instead of a family business and a profession. And their mom let the dad take care off all of the discipline which consisted of him saying, "Well, Bobby. I think you could have made a better decision in that situation, don't you?"

Year after year after hilarious year would find my brother crying that he wanted to be sent back to his real family and he didn't care if it was Mother's Day. Sometimes he would scream, if I did my job well. I, on the other hand, was Johnny-on-the-spot to step up to the plate and offer words of solace to both my Mother and Father. I would shake my head and admit, "After everything you've given him, he is so ungrateful," and all was right with the world. Those were the best Mother's Days I ever had.