What we're made of
There is a truism floating around that women are fated to grow up to be like their mothers. This has always worried me, because though I love my mother I very much do not want to be the type of person she is. For one thing, her habit of having the TV on all the time drives me clean up the wall. For another, that she has reduced her life to the point where it almost entirely consists of sitting in front of the TV doing counted cross-stitch terrifies me.
So on Christmas Day I was there at my mom's house and, as usual, she had the TV playing. I can tolerate commercial TV with its loud, ever-present commercials filled with disturbing assumptions about who I am and what my desires are for about 20 minutes, and so I had retreated to the kitchen. I had my laptop set up there, so I could plug the headphones in and sulk in dignified isolation without exactly imitating my 15-year-old-self's habit of hiding in my bedroom. (I didn't like TV then either. That eighth-grade English unit where we studied commercials while reading Animal Farm changed my life forever.)
There I was, putting ink down on Judgement Night and watching the cut scenes from Devil May Cry 4, when my mom wanders into the kitchen. "Hey, he's cute!" she says, pointing at the ever-delectable Nero. "What's his name?"
"Nero," I respond, on autopilot. "He's, ah, kind of a cousin to this guy--" I point to Dante, who is now on screen. "They are trying to save the world."
"Well good for them," my mom announces, and wanders back out of the kitchen.
Off all possible sources of my fascination with pretty, white-haired heroes, I inherited it from my mother is, without question, the most disturbing.
So on Christmas Day I was there at my mom's house and, as usual, she had the TV playing. I can tolerate commercial TV with its loud, ever-present commercials filled with disturbing assumptions about who I am and what my desires are for about 20 minutes, and so I had retreated to the kitchen. I had my laptop set up there, so I could plug the headphones in and sulk in dignified isolation without exactly imitating my 15-year-old-self's habit of hiding in my bedroom. (I didn't like TV then either. That eighth-grade English unit where we studied commercials while reading Animal Farm changed my life forever.)
There I was, putting ink down on Judgement Night and watching the cut scenes from Devil May Cry 4, when my mom wanders into the kitchen. "Hey, he's cute!" she says, pointing at the ever-delectable Nero. "What's his name?"
"Nero," I respond, on autopilot. "He's, ah, kind of a cousin to this guy--" I point to Dante, who is now on screen. "They are trying to save the world."
"Well good for them," my mom announces, and wanders back out of the kitchen.
Off all possible sources of my fascination with pretty, white-haired heroes, I inherited it from my mother is, without question, the most disturbing.