This past weekend, my good friend, Petitepoussin ,visited from the West Coast. She had a silly hat party and invited not only my girlfriend M. and I, but my mother and brother as well. I wore a grey beret with a bow, M. wore a bright baseball cap, and we convinced my mother to wear a helmut from the local gas company for whom my father works.We had a great time eating and drinking and listening to my mother tell everyone that I was making fun of her. Most of the time, I was not, some of the time I was. (Just a little)
While every single person at the party had arrived wearing a silly hat, my mother was convinced that we were trying to trick her so we could laugh at her silly hat. Of course, the plot to fool my mother does not extend as far to everyone invited to the party, and we did not call them and convince them to pretend it was a silly hat party. But, my mother was still suspicious and took off her hat almost immediately.
At one point, my mother started speaking to a woman in her twenties. The woman told her that she went to Ursynus college.
My mother immediately shouts across the room to M. and I, “this young lady went to Uranus college, where L. went!”
Now, I did not hear the mispronounciation. But M. did. And while my mother went back to the conversation, M. started shaking with laughter. It took me five minutes to get her to tell me what happened.
She tried saying it directly, but it was too much for her.
Finally, tears in her eyes she attempted to list the planets.
“You know the last few?” she asked, choking her laughter down to a small wimper.
I rolled my eyes, “Yup.”
“No, no! You have to say them!” she insisted.
I thought about the time Screech told Lisa to remember MVEMJSNUP on Saved by the Bell.
“Saturn, Neptune, Uranus…” I stopped, feeling bad that Pluto has been demoted to dwarf planet.
M. lost it. Howling she said, “Yes, that’s it! That’s what she called Ursynus college!”
Finally in on the joke, I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. I laughed harder when I realized what a task it must have been for the girl to whom my mother was speaking to not laugh in her face. Later, she told us it was incredibly difficult.
My mother, concerned about all the commotion turned to us and yelled, “are you two making fun of me?!”
“Of course not,” I said.







