Insanity is Hereditary

There is a little joke in our family (I'd say it was a private joke, except it's not, because I tell everyone about it) about how overprotective my mother was. It is this joke that let's me know that I am going completely insane. Let me explain...

There was an old "Highway" (Old 421) that ran between my neighborhood and the little shopping center at its entrance. This shopping center housed such wonders as a Little General convenience store and a video arcade during my formative years. And you could pretty much see said shopping center from my house... it was a really short bike ride away. Consequently, I wanted to go there. I mean... video games and Ho-Hos conveniently available in such close proximity?! What pre-teen could resist that sort of temptation? Oh... and the drug store next to the video arcade had the latest best-selling LPs for sale. It's where I bought Blondie's Autoamerican and Men at Work's Business As Usual . But I digress...

The point of this story (oh, yes... there is a point, dear reader) is that I was not allowed to ride my bike up to this shopping center. After all, it was a "Highway" and I would certainly be smooshed by a car if I attempted to cross, according to my mother. Perhaps now would be a good time to describe Old 421 to you...

Old 421 was so named because it, indeed, used to be 421... the highway that joins Greensboro to something south of Sanford. I'd tell you where, but I've never needed to go any further south on it than Sanford. In fact, it's hard to believe I ever needed to go to Sanford for anything, now that I think of it. But I digress again...

New 421 is a four-lane highway that runs parallel to Old 421 and it is the actual road anyone who wants to go more than 45 MPH would take if that person wanted to travel between, say, Greensboro and Sanford. Old 421 was renamed "Liberty Road" because it now connected some houses just north of my own to Liberty, North Carolina -- a pleasant little community that boasts a diner so greasy the rats wear protective headgear. However, to my mother, it was still Old 421, even though it had not been 421 since before we moved to Greensboro in 1973.

It was laughable enough that I was not permitted to cross this road at age 15, an age when I was very capable of looking both ways before pedaling. In fact, this was even before my Diet Coke habit, so I still had all those brain cells that Nutrasweet has since killed. But what made it even funnier, is that my mother DID permit me to fly from Milan, Italy to JFK Airport in New York alone when I was 15... only a couple of years after terrorists opened fire in Rome airport, which isn't Milan, but which is pretty darn close. Yet at that time, I STILL was not allowed to cross Liberty Road... uh... excuse me... Old 421.

So I have always sworn never to be irrationally reactionary and overprotective. However, the old adage that you become your mother seems to be coming true.

I came home from work the other day and was hit pretty hard emotionally when a friend of mine cancelled our trip to Carowinds. I know that seems silly, but let me just say that we have been planning this trip for, like, two years or more, and he also cancelled on me last August. Both times were for his work and were totally out of his control, but it still was a huge disappointment. Right after that, my husband asked me if I had seen the news about the boy who died at DisneyWorld on Mission Space. I hadn't, so I immediately went to the computer and looked up the story. Remember, I was not in a good emotional state when I did this.

As I finished reading, I found myself thinking, "So now we can never go to DisneyWorld again. Athena might die on one of these rides. I might strap her into the seat of Dumbo, and by the time the ride stops, she'll be gone." I'm not kidding, folks... that's what I thought. This is ME... I actually thought I would never go to Disney again. It only took me another few seconds to remember Old 421 and shake myself of the thought, but it was there... that thought... that instinct.

I have just stepped into my mother's brain and for a split second, I saw the logic. And I'm not sure what part of that frightens me more. I believe that I have started walking that mile in Mom's moccassins. And it's not easy.