Hi Mom

Mother's Day is May 14. How many times has that been announced via magazine ads, store signs, and television and radio commercials? Anyone who doesn't know by now that Mother's Day is May 14 is simply not paying attention, or is living in an underground hermitage somewhere in central North Dakota.

But here's the thing: I think it's a sad commentary on our society that someone (most likely the greeting card industry) felt the need to tell us we must appreciate our mothers. Will reminding ungrateful children and inattentive husbands to recognize these women one day a year with a bouquet of flowers and brunch at the local fancy-schmancy restaurant truly make the mothers of the world feel special? If they are such turds to be ungrateful and inattentive, a made-up holiday isn't going to change their attitudes. With a celebration, the mothers of these families will think not only are their children ungrateful and their husbands inattentive, they're hypocrites to boot.

And here's the other thing: When is my day? There is no special day to recognize women like me who choose not to add demand to an already overloaded planet. Why is there not a greeting card section for those ladies who gave up their rights to systematically (albeit unconsciously) cause many neuroses in the up-and-coming future of America? I think there should be a Population-Conscious Woman Day, or a Thank God She's Not A Mother Day.

As always I'll continue to grace my mother with the adoration she has come to expect on Mother's Day. I'll succumb to the societal pressure to worship the womb that carried me for nine months, and to praise the woman who insightfully realized that spanking with a wooden spoon wasn't such a good idea after all ... once her children were grown and on their own.

I know I may sound bitter, and perhaps I am simply for the fact that I, too, like to get presents, flowers, and brunch on a day that isn't my birthday. There just isn't much of a market in dried-up barren spinsters like myself. However, every year on Mother's Day I take much solace and have a silent, subversive pleasure in the knowledge that I will probably never have to wrangle with a prolapsed uterus. Lucky me!