"The Gift"

I'm going to get my tubes tied. No, on the other hand, I won’t get them tied, I’ll get them cut, diced, sliced, disconnected, chopped, burned, nuked, or whatever the hell it will take to make sure I never have kids. Don’t get me wrong, I think I'd be a great mom, it's just that I can't stand the thought of putting my kids through the torment of Mother's Day year after year. I can’t do that to innocent children.

Every year (and I mean every single year) my sisters and I engage in this ridiculous competition to see who can buy our mom the best Mother’s Day gift. The winner of this contest is not the one who buys the most expensive gift, but the one who buys the gift that gets the biggest reaction from our mom. This year, I won the contest hands down, but my mom’s big reaction to my gift was not quite the reaction I was looking for.

This is how it happened. Pristine, who is my sister and arch enemy, decided to have Mother's Day dinner at her fancy new apartment. My sister has money coming out of her rear-end and she loves to show it off. Pristine also has a new baby, so I knew that this dinner was going to end up being a showcase for the little one. Don't get me wrong, the baby is cute and everything, but she is WAY too needy.

I had a million things to do before Mother’s Day weekend. One of my tasks was to arrange for my kitchen to be painted because of some smoke damage caused by a little mishap I had with my blow dryer and some mozzarella cheese. I also had to select just the right gift for my mom. I decided to get her a bouquet of multicolored roses arranged in the shape of a rainbow. I selected this gift because the rainbow would symbolize the day my mom became a mother for the second time, which was the day I was born.

I thought this gift had the potential to get a reaction out of my mom, so I ordered the rainbow bouquet and arranged for them to be delivered to Pristine's apartment on Mother's Day. Before I get into what happened when I gave the gift to my mom, I'll take a second to explain how the rainbow thing comes into play.

When I was merely a fetus in my mom’s stomach, womb or whatever you want to call it, my mom, dad and Pristine went out for a drive. My father was at the wheel and it had just finished raining. A beautiful rainbow appeared and Pristine, who was about two years old at the time, saw the rainbow and shouted, "Look Daddy, there’s a rainbow! Where the hell is the leprechaun and where the hell is that damn pot of gold?" My father was so caught off guard by his little two-year-old cursing like a sailor, he lost control of the car and ran over a stop sign. My mom freaked out and went into labor. I was born thirteen hours later. This is why rainbows symbolize my birth.

When I stepped inside the apartment, I gave everyone hugs and kisses. As I expected, the baby was already being passed around from person to person. When it was Cristine's turn to hold the baby, she said, "I can't wait to become a mother." My mom then started going on and on about how she thought Cristine would be a great mom someday. I wanted to puke.

When it was my turn to hold the baby, I said, "I can't wait to become a mommy." After I said it, everyone burst out laughing and then Pristine said that I was not "mommy material." That’s when I smelled it. It was coming from the baby. It was a disgusting stench that was absolutely repulsive. Pristine then said, with a very sarcastic tone, "Uh oh, the baby made a poopie. Frannie, would you like to change the baby since you can't wait to become a mommy?" This comment brought the house down, so I said, "Yeah, sure. I'll change the baby." I then took the baby and a diaper and went to the bathroom to prove that I was in fact "mommy material."

It was torture. I laid the baby on the counter in the bathroom and unfastened the diaper. Inside the diaper were three little poops. The poops looked like little sausages, but they certainly didn't smell like sausages. As I removed the diaper from the baby, I heard a lot of talking and laughing coming from the living room. The baby must have gotten startled or something because she started wiggling around. When I finally got the diaper all the way off, I noticed that there were only two sausages left in the diaper. I panicked. I looked on the floor, under my shoe, on the counter, everywhere, but I could not find the poop.

As I was looking around for the sausage, I heard Pristine shout, "Francine, when you come back, we're going to open the presents, so bring your gift out of the bathroom when you're done!" My bouquet was under the counter like Pristine had said, so after I finished changing the diaper, I grabbed the baby with one arm, grabbed the bouquet with the other and headed back to the living room.

When my mother saw me with the bouquet of multicolored roses in the shape of a rainbow, she squealed with delight. I was thrilled because I could see the envy on my sisters' faces. I handed the baby to Pristine and then handed the flowers to my mom. My mom then stuck her face in the bouquet and inhaled deeply. She then lifted her face from the bouquet and said, "Francine, these roses smell like shit."

Pristine and Cristine cracked up laughing, but I was mortified because I smelled it too. I took the bouquet from my mom, inspected it and then I saw it. There it sat, at the bottom of the bouquet, the missing link.

THE END