Did you have a mean mother?  Well, if you were to ask me or any of my siblings, we had the meanest mother who ever lived.  If you don't believe me, just read on...

Was your Mom mean? I know ours was. Other kids got to eat junk food for breakfast; we had to eat “balanced meals”. Other kids got soda and junk food for lunch, but we got a sandwich and an apple. And for supper?  We got stuff like fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy and homemade biscuits.   And to top it all off…she’d make us wash it all down a big old glass of milk! Can you imagine such a thing?

That woman was always up in our business. You'd have thought we were prisoners in a gulag!  She had to know who our friends were, where we were going and what we’d be doing. She even insisted on knowing what time we’d be home!  Talk about cruel and unusual punishment!

She also made us do hard labor.   We had to set the table for supper, wash the dishes, clean our own rooms, feed the dogs, take out the trash and all manner of other dirty jobs. You know, sometimes, I think she took some sort of neurotic pleasure in making our lives miserable.

She even had the unmitigated audacity to insist that we tell the truth...the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  We swore that the woman was a mind reader with eyes in the back of her head.  I mean, she really knew how to make life miserable for us!  And on Sundays, when other kids got to sleep in and watch cartoons on TV, Mom got us out of bed and made us go to Sunday School.  She was always telling us those boring stories out of the Bible and even made us read it and learn memory verses from it!

Because of our mother, we missed out on lots of things other kids experienced.  None of us ever got caught shoplifting, doing drugs or ever wound up in jail…and it was all her fault.  I can tell you, we had some real battles with this woman.  And you know something?  I'm glad she won.  We ended up being the winners…and not in the "Charlie Sheen" sense of the word.  We grew up to be educated, honest, God-fearing adults…and it was all her fault.

So to my mom and to all you other moms reading this…thanks for always loving your babies by being a "mean" to them.  Happy Mother's Day!