I got the monthly report on my family last night from my mom. What bothers me, aside from the usual in-fighting about money and how my siblings' relationships are screwier than an Andy Dick reading of Hamlet's soliloquy, is the fact that my mother seems to have all these guys hitting on her lately. I say lately, because my father died in November. What's weird is that these guys have no compunction about saying the most crass and crude things to her, as if they were teenage boys instead of grown (and sometimes, married) men. I guess men never age. I mean grow up. This one guy, who is somewhat of a bigwig in the small town my mother lives in, calls her every Thursday at work "just to make sure you got to work safe." Another guy comes in and asks if he can call her. She says "I don't know." So he proceeds to leave her convenience store and IMMEDIATELY call her at the store on his cellphone. He tells her to his wife left him and would she like to get dinner sometime. He even adds, "I promise, no sex stuff." Which is what every woman wants to hear. What a shot in the arm to the old self-esteem.

So when she's at work, this bigwig will inevitably come in and make small talk, laced with innuendos about how he'd like to show her his ranch and how her voice drives him wild (she's from Berlin and has never lost the accent). This dude is very married, by the way. So the other day, there is a "secret shopper" for the company that owns the store my mother works at, those people who come in and evaluate the staff without them knowing. My mother passed the inspection, and was awarded a cash prize and a "gold star" certificate for her friendliness, efficiency, etc. Anyway, this married guy comes in, hears about it, leaves and comes back with a present for her. He makes her open it there and it's a box of chocolates. He tells her they're for her service. He also says they are aphrodisiacs. Then he says that she is "very important" to him and kisses her on the forehead. I swear, this kind of stuff really still goes on? Men think that this type of steamroller approach works? She told me that all she could think of was "Please leave, I'm old, go find someone else."

Aside from the legal ramifications of this (what would they be, anyway? He's not her boss), my mother is overly friendly with everyone. I don't mean she flirts, I mean she's one of those people who can make you feel like the most important person in the world when she's talking to you. Everyone in that town loves her. Maybe it's the accent, but men, even when my dad was alive, would pester her. Now I think it's different because there's a possibility (remote) that there could be:
a) A date
b) A relationship
c) A marriage to someone else
d) Se- I can't even write the word. It's my MOM!

My mother is still deeply entrenched in trying to tie up my father's estate, retirement stuff, etc. and she just bought a permanent marker for his grave. They were married for 40 years. Isn't there even a mourning period that people should respect before badgering her to "find someone?" She even tells me that she has no interest in even talking to these people outside of work. She just wants to be left alone. But again, things could change.

I'm trying not to think I'm being a selfish child who doesn't care about the happiness of his parent because that would threaten how I perceive that parent. But I do know that my family is not the family of divorce, of stepfathers and step and half-siblings. This is just not something I've had to confront before. And that's not to denigrate those types of families. It would just be unprecedented.

Part of this comes from my utter loathing for the town I was forced to call home in middle and high school. These people have not left the 50s and disgust me politically and socially. To think that she would ever hook up with one of these Mayberry yahoos is excruciatingly sickening.

Ecch. I need to shower.