The NRA Idiocy of a Good Guy with a Gun

The least surprising thing in America happened again on Sunday: a mass shooting. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and gun violence. Ain’t that America?

Of course it is. Mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in any other country on Earth. We kill big groups of innocent people with guns better than anyone. It’s part of our freedom.

This time the shooter opened fire in a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. The police say that a civilian with a handgun heard the shooting, fired at the gunman, and killed him. But not before three people were killed.

That sound you hear in the distance is the cheering of NRA gun fetishists. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’ll try to convince us that gun restrictions are a bad idea because they only prevent good people from getting guns, and if that good guy couldn’t get a gun, then the body count would have been higher.

Which of two fantasy worlds – one where everyone had a gun or one where no one had a gun – would be safer? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We’ll never get rid of every gun, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward doing so. The toothpaste is out of the tube on America’s gun problem to an extent. Thanks to the monsters at the NRA, and the finest senators that their money can buy, we’ve created a country where guns have more rights than women.

Women’s bodies: Regulated. Guns: Not regulated.

But just because the toothpaste is out of the tube doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t clean it off the counter.

To clean up America’s gun problem we need to stop listening to the NRA and their supporters. They’ve lost all credibility. Letting these firearm-worshipping extremists hold us hostage has led us to their current “wisdom”: we’ve all got to arm ourselves because we’re the only ones who can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But more of their “wisdom” – the “right” for everyone to carry their guns openly in public, and the “constitutional right” to carry a gun without a license – means that the only way we can differentiate between a madman with a gun and a “law-abiding citizen” simply deciding to exercise their “rights” and carry a gun while shopping at JCPenney’s is to wait for the armed lunatic to start shooting. And that’s when the “good guy with a gun” steps in.

Put another way, rather than create a society where anyone with a gun in a public place can rightly be assumed to be a madman, the gun fetishists have created a society where we can’t tell if someone’s a madman until they’ve already shot someone. Translation: protecting the “right” of some “good guy” to pretend he can be some superhero vigilante is more important than protecting the actual life of a human being.

The irony of such an incident occurring on the same day that a report on the Uvalde school shooting is released can’t be overlooked. A bunch of “heroes” who are supposedly “brave” and “well-trained” stood by and did nothing rather than confront a madman killing children. A police officer at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida hid outside rather than confronting the gunman inside.

Good guys with guns.

Like most of what the NRA and their supporters have said since fringe radicals took over the organization in 1977, the Good Guy with a Gun argument is bullshit. Expecting some mythical good guy to stop a shooting after a lunatic has already shot someone, rather than trying to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place only makes obvious the toxic reality of the NRA and the guns rights lobby: they value guns more than humans.

America has a gun problem, and if we’re going to do anything about it we have to stop listening to those who created the problem: the NRA and gun rights advocates. We’re not in a position today to repeal the Second Amendment, but if we ever want to actually become a great country, we must do it someday.

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The Last Week of School is the Best Week of the Year

This week is one of my favorite weeks of the year: the last week of school. With fifty-two weeks each year it can be tough to choose the best. The build-up to Christmas is nice. That lazy week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the entire world seems discombobulated and economic production falls close to zero is pretty great. Thanksgiving and its excesses can really hit the spot. And nobody hates Spring Break.

But there’s nothing like that last week of school.

My kids have four days left. The school year ends on Thursday, officially, but what’s really happening these last four days? The high schoolers will have finals, no doubt. There’s plenty of studying to be done, but nothing new to be learned. Woe to the teacher who tries to cover new material this week. It ain’t happenin’.

The elementary school usually has field day – parachute, kickball, tug o’ war – one afternoon this last week, but they moved up the schedule this year for some reason, so it’s already done. Monday is iPad Charger Turn In Day, which seems to imply iPads will use less than 100% of their juice over the following three days. There’s the awards ceremony, which will take up an hour, and the Fifth Grade Send Off, which is Thursday’s big deal. But what happens the rest of the week? Not a lot. Which is what makes it great!

Speaking of Fifth Grade Send Off, this is the end of the line for me and elementary school. My kids are spread out in age such that I’ve had at least one kid in elementary school for 19 of the last 20 years. But this is it. I’ve got four more days as an elementary school parent, and I miss it already.

I could write all day about my nostalgia for something that hasn’t even ended yet, but that’s not what this is.

The last week of school.

I’m so envious of my kids. They’re finishing fifth, ninth, and eleventh grade this year. And when the bell rings on Thursday they’ll know they have the entire summer ahead of them. They’re night owls, and if you’re looking for them Thursday night at midnight, or even later, you’ll find them at home, wide awake, as if trying to milk every second from summer. Of course, that’s offset by sleeping late, and the summer sun is always high in the sky by the time they wake up. But it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to get up for school. Time becomes insignificant.

As I thought about this final week of school, I tried to pinpoint what made it so special, and not until I wrote that last sentence did I put my finger on it. Time.

My daughter is finishing fifth grade and I’m sure that summer will seem so long. She’ll probably be bored every now and then. But she won’t think about summer only being 76 days long. (I feel like summer is ending and it hasn’t even begun yet. But that’s a deeply-held trait of mine: nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened yet.) She’ll enjoy each day, and appreciate not waking up early for school, and no one telling her that she needs to go to bed. These are the nights that she’ll develop her individualism, spending hours by herself, doing whatever she wants with no expectations or responsibilities.

My sons are in high school. My older son is finishing eleventh grade, which means this could be his last summer. Next year at this time he’ll be graduating high school, and then the adult trap of productiveness falls upon him.

I’m torn between my Get A Job tendencies and my Enjoy the Summer, You’re a Kid tendencies. There’s plenty of time for work, but those years of being a kid are fleeting. And he’s old enough that his summer is going to be shorter than his sister’s summer. He knows what’s coming. He’ll enjoy the summer, but he’ll have one eye on that horrendous day in August when school begins again. He is my son after all. It’s hard to enjoy anything with a sense of dread hanging over you.

The melancholy in all of this is adulthood. Nothing ruins a childhood as completely as becoming an adult.

Some adults get summers off. I suspect that’s why many teachers choose to teach. Summers off is a definite perk. But even if an adult has summers off, they’re not really off. They know what’s coming. They know time will have its way with them, and that first day back at work will be here before they know it.

Also, let’s not forget that adults have something that kids don’t have: responsibilities. And that lack of responsibilities may be the biggest make or break factor of the summer. And once it’s gone, it’s gone. Never to return. Until retirement, I guess. Although, youth is gone by then.

I’m going to enjoy this week. There aren’t many of them left.

But don’t tell my kids.

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I've Copied my Dad to Become a Good Father

While digging through some bins of the sort of personal items that we can’t bring ourselves to throw away, yet look at every half decade or so, I came across a scorecard from a 1990 Cubs game. It’s cardboard, with two pictures of Mark Grace, and a Jays potato chip ad on the front. On the inside is the space to keep score, along with rosters for both teams.It’s minimalist compared to the glossy, colorful, photo-packed publications available at games today. And if I remember correctly, it cost a buck. Maybe fifty cents. I can still see and hear the old guy who used to stand inside the right field gate and shout, “Pencils! Scorecards! Yearbooks!”I often kept score at games, but not on that day. At least, not on that scorecard. It’s possible we got another scorecard on which to keep score, but I had something more important in mind that day. Autographs.After the game, my dad promised that we could wait by the players' parking lot and try to get some autographs. So we waited for the crowd to file out, and made our way to the triangle along the third base side of Wrigley, where Gallagher Way is today. We stood along the fence, and after a while, some players started coming out.Doug Dascenzo signed before getting into a minivan with his wife. Dwight Smith signed and then got into his Mercedes. He had wipers on his headlights, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Mark Grace signed, and I noticed right away that his autograph looked like “Mr Jose.”I stood mesmerized as I watched player after player come out, get into their cars and drive away.All of that came back to me in an instant as I saw the scorecard in that plastic bin.I was that twelve-year-old kid again, the memories as vivid as if they’d happened yesterday, rather than 30 years ago.I have a good memory. Dates, places, events. I can usually keep them straight. Inevitably, after I recall something like the events surrounding that scorecard, I think of how it came to be. And I can't count how many good memories from the first half of my life thus far came to be thanks to my parents.I’ve written about how I hit the mother jackpot before. But I somehow ended up with a fantastic father, as well.Now that I’m a father, I’ve done pretty well by just emulating him. He has shaped and influenced my life in ways large and small, and I’m a good father to my kids, in part, because he’s been such a good father to me.I’ve got countless memories like that Cubs scorecard because he gave me his time and attention, two things for which there are no substitute.The big memories (Cubs games, Cubs conventions, vacations) are overshadowed only by the day-to-day commitment to being a good father, and a good person, which manifests in a million different ways.He showed me the importance of hard work. He showed me the innate morality in treating everyone equally. In supporting your loved ones, no matter what.Besides showing me how to be a good dad, he shaped me in smaller ways. I have the same interest in history and trivia. Looking at road maps with him during my childhood is part of the reason I've been interested in them throughout my life. And, of course, there’s baseball, and the Chicago Cubs.But his greatest gift to me has been the memories he helped me create. Not only do I get to enjoy and relive moments again, but I can recall how I felt, and then figure out how to create that same feeling in my own children.Whether it’s going outside to play catch after getting home from work. Or standing in line for five hours so my son can play a new video game for five minutes. Or not missing games, concerts, and recitals.Parenting can be difficult. But having a rock-solid template to follow makes it much easier.I’m forever thankful to have such a terrific father.Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? The only way to make sure you know when I've written something new is to subscribe to my blog. Facebook won't show you all of my posts, but if you subscribe we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I won't send junk, and you can opt-out anytime.

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How My Mom Prepared Me for the First Mother's Day Without Her

Nothing in my life has ever made me feel more like both an adult and a child at the same time than my mother’s death. I’ve struggled to recognize – and perhaps process -- the multi-layered emotions I’ve experienced in the months since she died, and it just occurred to me as I stared at this blank screen that the collision of these two phases of life might be why.Losing a parent makes you feel like an adult. Getting married, buying a house, having a kid, getting divorced – all of those are adult things. But I’ve never felt more adultish than when my mom died. All my life she cared for me. And then, right near the end, I cared for her.And in caring for her I did things that I never thought I could do. Or at least I wondered whether I could do them. But I did them. Some of those things were difficult, but it didn’t matter. My two sisters and I did them.We did them because she spent our entire lives showing us how much she loved us. Every single day. Without fail. And although I tried to be a good son, I can’t help but wonder whether I came up a bit short in showing her how much I loved her. How much I appreciated her. But if I came up short, at least I know that those things we did near the end showed her how much we loved her.Caring for a sick parent is the natural order of things, I guess. Children are supposed to live longer than their parents. It’s an incomprehensible level of sadness when that doesn’t happen. But just because it’s natural, doesn’t mean it’s easy.In the relationship between me and my mom, she was always the parent, and I was always the child. I guess for some people – those poor, unlucky people who weren’t blessed with great parents – that’s not always the case. But for me it was. I was the child. She was the mother. She loved me. She cared for me. She supported me. She looked out for me. No matter what happened in my life – poor decisions, embarrassing revelations, shameful actions – I never had to doubt whether my mom was on my side. Her love was constant.And because I knew that her love was constant, I knew that I had something on which I could always rely. In success, sadness, heartbreak, achievement, frustration, and everything else, she served as an anchor. A safe harbor to which I could always retreat. I could live my life and sometimes make mistakes, sometimes get things right, and no matter how it turned out she’d be there.Until she wasn’t.Or, rather, until she couldn’t.It’s been 211 days since she could be there. And on most of those days, at least once, I’ve thought about turning to her, and then realize that I can’t. She’s gone and I’m still the child, looking for her to anchor me. Looking for the safe harbor. Longing to know that she still has my back.The absence is overwhelming sometimes.But then the natural order of things takes over. The child has become the adult. And because that child had a mother who loved him, and nurtured him, and taught him, and guided him, and supported him, he’s okay. He has made it through.He has made it through because the success of any good parent is preparing the child to excel without them. By always being there when I needed her, she prepared me for life after her. She taught me the important stuff. She made sure that I’d be okay after she was gone, even though I’ve often wondered whether I would be.I won’t hear my mom’s voice this Mother’s Day. I’ll miss her, like I always do. But I’ll also smile because she was my mother. And if ever a person deserved her own day, she did. I could not have asked for a better mother – or a better grandmother to her grandchildren, by the way – than my mom.So I’ll find a way to celebrate this Mother’s Day. Maybe I’ll eat a Dove bar, or watch an episode of Coach, or read a few pages of a Diana Gabaldon book – all things that she loved.Or maybe, if I really want to do something that captures her spirit, I’ll hug my own kids and tell them that I love them.Click here to receive an e-mail each time I write a new post! Guaranteed spam-free, unsubscribe any time Listen to my podcast, More Later...PREVIOUS POST: While Our Lives Are Paused, Discover Gratitude

While Our Lives Are Paused, Discover Gratitude

There’s no doubt that coronavirus is deadly. We watch its body count rise daily with no certainty where it will stop. But as dangerous as that virus is to our bodies, doom and gloom is even more dangerous to our souls. And while most of us will avoid the least desirable outcome of coronavirus, our efforts to protect our bodies threaten to make none of us immune to doom and gloom.It’s easy to get down. Even those of us who haven’t become sick can get mired in all that we’ve lost. Retirement funds. Jobs. Vacations. Baseball. That bar with the self-serve taps.At some point – if it hasn’t already – the novelty of self-isolation and hours of Netflix will wear off. Humans are social creatures, and despite how we feel on rainy, cold mornings, we do better when we’re out in the world rather than holed up in our homes. We’re not moles.How long do we have to keep this up? I’m not sure anyone knows, and those who might know are too wise to say.When facing a worldwide pandemic, necessary isolation of an unknown duration, and loss of so many small things that bring us joy, what are we to do?There’s only one thing to do: practice gratitude.The current pandemic is scary. Even as we live through it, I find it hard to believe what we’re being asked to do. Kids can’t go to school? No concerts? Stay inside your house so you don’t catch a deadly disease or spread it to others?This doesn’t even seem like real life.But for today, this is real life. And tomorrow. And the day after that. And probably quite a few days after that.Not all of us will make it through, but most of us will. Those of us who are healthy, relatively young, and have decent insurance have a better chance. One day life will return to normal for us.And it’s that prospect of returning to normal where gratitude comes in.What we’re experiencing now is an interlude. It’s that space between the life we were living and the life we’ll live in the future. And during this interlude we can mope, and worry, and fill ourselves with dread, and generally freak out, or we can use this break as a chance to take stock of our lives.This pandemic is providing a chance for all of us to put things on hold. To do without. In America we’re being forced to do something that Americans hate to do: sacrifice.But from that sacrifice may grow gratitude.Life is so daily. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges, struggles, and monotony of life, and forget the many things for which we should be grateful. But now that so many of those things have been taken from us, perhaps we’ll appreciate them more when they return.Having dinner at your favorite pizza place. Watching your daughter play soccer. Helping your son with his math homework. Buying toilet paper. A cold beer, a hot dog, and organ music at Wrigley Field. Riding public transportation. Field trips.Some of those things are fun. Some are a chore. But now that we can’t do any of them, maybe we’ll realize that they’re the real stuff in life, and to simply let them pass by without gratitude is letting our lives pass by. And if we can’t experience gratitude for the small things in our life, then how will we ever know what the large things are?Thousands of people have died, and thousands more will die. Many of us will get sick, and almost all of us will worry. It’s dreadful.But it’s also a gift. It’s a forced pause button that gives us the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, our loved ones, our world, and our existence. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to spend a lot of time with those people we love the most. And we’ll also gain an appreciation for many other things that we had to lose in order to discover how important they are to us.I read an article that said the world will never be the same after this. The writer was talking about health policy, and governmental programs. But if we take this time to think about what we’ve loved and what we’ve lost, then we’ll never be the same either.And for that, we should be forever grateful.Click here to receive an e-mail each time I write a new post! Guaranteed spam-free, unsubscribe any time Listen to my podcast, More Later...PREVIOUS POST: Fifty Years Ago Today, A Wedding

Fifty Years Ago Today, A Wedding

On January 12, 1969, a twenty-two-year-old sailor landed in California to begin a thirty-day leave from Vietnam. Having already served nine months of his initial twelve-month assignment, he extended his stay for an additional six months. In exchange, the Navy provided a thirty-day leave anywhere in the world.

He went home.

He changed planes in Kansas City, and then Chicago, before landing in Peoria. After a thirty-mile drive on route 116, he made it home, to London Mills.

Glad to be home, he spent some time in his small hometown, but had further travels in mind. After visiting with his parents, siblings, and friends, he got in a car and drove to New York.

He had to go see about a girl.

While in Vietnam the sailor exchanged letters with his friend, Bob, whom he knew from their time together on the U.S.S. Moale. Bob’s girlfriend, Anne Marie, had a single friend, and Bob suggested the sailor write to her, so he did.

He wrote a letter to her almost every single day from Vietnam for six months, and she wrote back to him. But she only wrote back because he was in Vietnam. Otherwise, she never would have answered him. But while on leave, the sailor drove to see her in New York City.

They were an unlikely pair. Three times as many people attended her high school in Queens as lived in his small town in Illinois.

But they hit it off, and a couple of days after meeting for the first time, while sitting in a car in Astoria, Queens, the sailor asked the girl to marry him, and she said yes. While this was happening, a romance-killing parking enforcement officer somehow wrote the sailor a ticket. A small price to pay to get the girl.

It took a couple of more days before the sailor worked up the gumption to ask the girl’s imposing father for the girl’s hand in marriage. He gave his permission, and opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate, despite behind-the-scenes reservations about his daughter marrying some sailor from the midwest whom she only met a few days before.

On Saturday, December 6, 1969, at 3:30 pm, the sailor married the girl in Our Lady of the Snows Roman Catholic Church in Queens.If you haven’t figured it out by now, the sailor is my dad, and the girl is my mom.They married fifty years ago today, after my dad had been discharged from the Navy, and began their lives together.

They lived apart until they got married, and then moved back to London Mills for a month, before moving to Daytona Beach so my dad could go to umpiring school. My mom worked for a preacher who ran his church out of the same building as his asphalt company.

When umpiring didn’t work out, they moved to Queens. And over the following eighteen years they moved from Queens to Port Jervis, New York, to London Mills, to Peoria, to Springfield, before settling in northwest Indiana. Along the way they had two daughters, and then a son, me. Realizing they couldn’t get a kid better than me, they stopped having kids.

I remember December 6, 1984. Their 15th anniversary. I was 6. My oldest sister was almost 12, and had somehow arranged for someone who worked with my dad to take her to the store to get streamers and balloons to decorate for their anniversary. We spelled “Happy 15th Anniversary” on the wall of the living room in yellow streamers. I remember thinking that 15 years seemed so long.But they were still just getting started.I can’t imagine what it took to stay married for five decades. Unless I live to a ripe, old age, I’ll never know.

I’m sure there were bad days. Maybe even bad years. They grew older. Kids grew up. Jobs changed. Houses changed. Times changed. But through it all, they remained.

It’s been 18,263 days since the sailor and the girl got married on that 39-degree day in Queens. But the last 55 days have been the most difficult, because the girl – the sailor’s wife, my mom – died on October 12.

I’ll spend today with my dad. And we’ll do our best not to dwell on the last 55 days, but rather appreciate all those days that came before.

And I’ll think about my mom, and Bob, and Anne Marie, and those letters, and that day fifty years ago that led to everything that I am.

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The Confusing Irony of Being Thankful for Sadness This Thanksgiving

The Confusing Irony of Being Thankful for Sadness This Thanksgiving

I’ve been listening to a podcast called WTF with Marc Maron for more than eight years. Two new episodes are released each week, and for the past four years it’s the only series to which I’ve been devoted. No other podcasts. No television shows. Just WTF every Monday and Thursday.About eighteen months ago I listened to the very first episode from 2009, and have listened to each subsequent episode. Yesterday I listened to an episode from 2011 with Adam Carolla.As Maron and Carolla recounted Carolla’s unlikely journey to fame and fortune in Hollywood, they spent a lot of time discussing Carolla’s parents. I’d heard him talk about his parents before and he described their parenting style as “benign neglect.” They weren’t physically or verbally abusive. Being abusive would have required effort. His parents expended no effort in his upbringing. He says that everything he has become is from what he has gleaned on his own, with no input from his parents.Because of the extreme hands-off style his parents employed, Carolla said he felt no emotional bond with his parents. He said that he would have preferred to have his dad put out a cigarette on his arm once a month. At least then his dad would have shown he felt something, even if it was bad. Instead, both of his parents never seemed to feel a thing – good or bad – toward him. His existence was incidental.I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about Carolla’s point; that even feeling something bad was better than feeling nothing at all. At first, it seems counterintuitive. Who wants to feel something bad? Isn’t the point of alcohol to take those bad feelings and numb them? Isn’t that part of the reason sleep is so great? It gives us a chance to shut off our minds and think of nothing.I’ve been thinking about, and experiencing, sadness for the past few months. I’ve been lucky that my sadness hasn’t been persistent, in that it doesn’t dominate every second of every day. But it’s always just under the surface, and a particular thought, or word, or picture, or even smell can bring it right back up to the surface. And I’ve learned that each individual experience of sadness is fleeting. I’m not going to experience the most intense sadness every second of every day forever. So if I can just hold on, sit in the sadness for a bit, and wait until I come out on the other side, then it’s manageable.It’s quite coincidental that I listened to Carolla’s experience the day before Thanksgiving, a day that exists for us to think about parts of our life for which we should be thankful.This year I’ll think of all of the things for which I try to express gratitude every day – my kids, my family, special friends, my health – but a giant part of my gratitude has been replaced by sadness this year.And sometimes it’s difficult to keep that sadness from consuming me.But as I thought about Carolla’s benign neglect, it occurred to me that this year maybe I could even be thankful for the sadness.Of course, I wish I weren’t sad. I wish things were different. But I’m sad because I lost one of the most valuable things that any person can ever have: a loving, caring parent whose time, attention, and devotion helped make me who I am.There are cheesy sayings that capture the same sentiment: It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Or don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.No matter how I think of it, the point is the same. The happiness I experienced all my life as a result of having such great parents is much better than the nothingness Carolla’s parents exhibited. That’s obvious. But this Thanksgiving I won’t forget that even the sadness I’m feeling is better than nothingness.We’re never sad from losing something unimportant. The sadness emphasizes the importance of what we’ve lost. It’s a reminder of what we had.So when I feel the sadness today, I’m going to try to be thankful for it because it means I had someone great.And even though she’s gone, I’ll never lose what she gave to me.Click here to receive an e-mail each time I write a new post! Guaranteed spam-free, unsubscribe any time IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How to Fail at Thanksgiving (But Still Make it Awesome!)PREVIOUS POST: A Tribute to My Mom that I Wrote More Than Half my Life Ago

A Tribute to My Mom that I Wrote More Than Half my Life Ago

Sometime in 1997 I began writing a blog. I didn't call it a blog (that word hadn't yet been invented). I called it a column. And it wasn't hosted anywhere. I sent it via e-mail to a list of readers I recruited via AOL's profile search. I had the foresight to save these columns on my computer, and then on floppy disks. I just bought a USB floppy disk drive, and much to my surprise, these almost-two-decade-old floppy disks still work, despite being stored in temperatures ranging from below zero to well above 100 degrees.Below is a column that I wrote to honor my mom in 1998, when I was twenty years old. More than half my life ago.Thursday marks the anniversary of one of the most important events that has affected my life. Fifty-two years ago in Long Island Jewish Hospital (2019 edit: I got the hospital wrong. My mom was born in the Bronx) my mother was born. I say that it is one of the most important events of my life because without that event, I would not be here.Some say that the bond between a mother and her son is the strongest bond in human life. I have often wondered why that is. I guess that my mother proves the reason to me everyday. The ironic thing is that it is not any earth-shattering, groundbreaking reason. She loves me and I love her. It does not get much more simple than that.Last week I wrote a column about my father that many people responded to and suggested that I show it to him. In that column I commented on how I do not think that there is any better father in the world. I know you all may be amazed, and I am sure that some of you disagree, but not only do I have the best father in the world, but my mother ranks second to no one either.When I was about 4 or 5 years old my mom worked during the day and my dad worked midnights. Every morning my mom would wake me up and she would fix me breakfast before she went to work and then she would pour me an incredibly huge glass of red Kool-Aid and make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and put both of them in the refrigerator. My father slept all day and I would sit on the couch and watch the 700 Club. (I was on odd child. I also used to read the telephone book.) The highlight of my day would be when my mom would call right after lunch to be sure that I ate my sandwich and that I had enough Kool-Aid to make it through the afternoon until she got home.She does a million little things that over the years add up and make me realize how incredible she really is. When I was 9 years old I wanted to join the Cub Scouts. At the time we lived in Springfield, Illinois and my dad was working in Michigan. He would live in Michigan during the week and on the weekends drive home and spend the weekend with us and then drive back and be in Michigan for work on Monday morning. My dad was not there during the week for about a year. My mom knew how much I wanted to join the Cub Scouts so she said that she would go to all of the meetings with me instead of my dad. It was a little odd at first. All of the boys had their dads with them and I was the only one who brought my mom. But as time went by I began liking having my mom their (2019 edit: should be "there") and thought it was cool that she could do things with me that my dad was not able to do because he was not there. Part of Cub Scouts is that you work to earn patches. I remember working for my first patch. We had to buy this Cub Scout book that had a whole bunch of projects in it. I had to finish a certain number of projects in order to get a patch. I got a little discouraged at first when I did not think that I was going to be able to do the projects, but my mom helped me and together we finished all of the projects necessary. I earned my patch!Now that I am 20 years old things are obviously changing a little bit. I do things for myself now but she is still always there to help me whenever I need her. Those weeks that school and work catch up to me and I am not able to do my laundry, or when I was too busy during the day to grab something to eat, she is always there to help me. Sometimes I wonder if she really knows how much I love and appreciate her. I try to tell her as often as possible but I know that it is not as much as I should.Unfortunately I am having some major financial difficulties now and it does not look like I am going to have the money to get her a gift for her birthday. This really upsets me because she has given me a gift everyday for 20 years. But it would not matter what I got her because no gift could ever compare to the gift of love and support that I have experienced every day on this Earth. Even though I will not be able to get her a material gift, you can be sure that I will let her know how much I appreciate and love her. After all, she is my mom.