I NEVER LEARNED THIS FROM MY MOTHER!

My mother gave me lots of advice. I have remembered much of it and used little of it. Mothers in my Mom’s day were concerned with what might happen to you if you suddenly had to go to the emergency room: WHAT WOULD THOSE DOCTORS THINK IF THEY DISCOVERED A SAFTETY PIN HOLDING YOUR BRA STRAP TOGETHER? As a Mother myself, I today’s world much more complicated, and the issues I nag my daughters about are MUCH more fraught!

Do you have to wear those eight inch heels? Podiatrists all over the world are profiting from this trend. Do men REALLY like women who are well over six feet tall? I you keep this up, by the time you are thirty, you will be a cripple, I guarantee you!

Do you have to send a text message every twenty seconds? Are your friends that needy? Or that lonely? What do you all TELL each other all the time? Why is it better to text than to talk? And you could DIE if you do it while driving!

Who invented pub crawls? Yes, I taught you to set goals. But what is the purpose of deliberately setting out to get drunk, flash your boobs, give lap dances to strangers, and then want to DIE the next morning? Is there a benefit to this that I am missing somehow?

What is the difference between downloading and UPLOADING? Do you need worms to go phishing? Is autosense anything close to COMMON sense? And if a HASH TAG is what I think it is, you better NOT be IT in that game!

Believe me when I tell you that having a career is great, but having a CHILD is greater. That biological clock thing is REAL. And really, the fact that it is possible for fifty year old women to gestate successfully HELPS THEIR MOTHERS NOT AT ALL. I would like to have a grandchild that I would be young enough to pick up, and still sane enough to recognize! By the time you are in your forties, I will be closing in on wearing diapers myself!

Really, the whole concept of multi-tasking has just gone too far. I know your generation is brilliant, competitive, and driven. But texting while driving, using your blackberry and your computer simultaneously, eating your lunch at the dry cleaners, and working on your Master’s thesis while on the treadmill just seems counter productive to me.

Remember to set some time aside for family. Book clubs, teams in training, yes, BLOGS, Ebay, eco tourism, TiVo, and fantasy football are all very important aspects of your life. But walking around the block with your Dad, emailing your sister, sitting around at Thanksgiving for just one more helping of potatoes, and calling home once a week are essential building blocks of life. Remember that thing about smelling roses?

Well, we have some unbelievable rose bushes here in our yard! Want to come over and have a whiff?