Hezo Kittie

God Bless America

I went to a Giants game with my parents and my mom's friend on the Fourth of July. It was gorgeous, breezy, and tiny Tim Lincecum was on the mound.

In the beginning of the game, my mom and her friend left to buy garlic fries. They were taking a long time because the garlic fries line was always really long, so my dad and I went to another booth to buy hot dogs and beer. My mom and her friend came back and my mom bought me chicken strips and a soda.

"Oh, I didn't know you were going to get drinks," she said.
"Well... I'll still drink the soda! Don't worry about it. Thanks," I replied sheepishly.

The way my parents perceive me was distilled in this simple event that I can't get out of my head. My dad sees me as this mature, proactive young adult with a useful mixture of technical and people skills. I feel less like a son and more like a friend or colleague, someone to bounce ideas off of and talk shop. But it's not the friend that you call when you don't know who to turn to, but the one that you sit next to at work when you're not on a call and inquire about what they're reading.

My mom sees me as this forgetful kid who makes the occasional bone headed decision and is easily satisfied with simple things like chicken, corned beef, or Sprite. And I know she loves me because I've done nothing to deserve everything that she's given me, as big as a trip to Hawaii and as small as a trip to Taco Bell when I was a little kid, yet here I am, twenty-one long years later, and she still wants to surprise me with a soda.

And when she came to me with the soda and I was holding the beer, I felt like I implied, "I don't need that stuff anymore Mom, I'm a beer drinker, I'm not that that kid anymore." But it's a sham. Although I do love beer, the point of the metaphor was that I am way more the person that my mom sees than the one my dad does. I am not some autonomous man who always uses his resoucefulness and initiative. Life is scary and I'm incapable of making even simple decisions.

It just seems painful to accept the soda because I don't deserve it. I have a very guilty conscience.