1. On the eve of my freshman year of college, my mom told me to not let anyone borrow my slips. As it turned out she was right. I let C borrow my black half slip. I never got it back. She lost it on a date.
2. When I was 10 my mom told me, “A man might hit you once because you didn’t know it was coming, but he will never get the opportunity to hit you again”. She set me up for a life of zero physical abuse. I only wish she had had the ability to teach me the warning signs of emotional abuse.
3. Also at 10 she inexplicably said: “If you have to shoot someone, go for the stomach or the knee. The stomach because it’s constantly moving. It will cause them great pain, but it won’t kill them”. I nodded dutifully in agreement, but to this day I’m still not sure what was up with that.
4. When I was 6 my mom explained to me the problem with the “Frito Bandito” jingle I was singing. It was my favorite. She talked to me about stereotypes against Mexicans. I stopped singing it, but the lyrics are forever a part of my brain.
5. When I was 12 I was standing on a bus with my mom as it rode through Waikiki. She silently gestured to me with her eyes to take note of a middle aged woman with numbers tattooed on her forearm. When we got off the bus, she told me about the Holocaust and what that woman had undoubtably gone through. That woman is forever part of my psyche.