by Jess Howe

Created on: July 06, 2009

It's a worrisome thing when your mother brings a new boyfriend home. She's always bringing home the same kind of guy, never someone who'll take her down the Yellow Brick Road or into Camelot, but losers who take her nowhere but back alleys and police stations.

My mother was on boyfriend number sixteen that day, and I'd just come home from the plant and was working on my computer course from Phoenix U. Since Harvard wouldn't give me a degree, I figured computer courses would maybe be easier. They didn't mind if I occasionally stole stuff from Sid Meyers, Alexander Graham Bell, Lyn Marguilis and Harvey Umbago. They seemed to be fine with it as long as I hid my thefts well enough in my writing - and after the Harvard fiasco, I sure did. So I was in the kitchen that day working on a project for my biochem class, all about cloning, when they came in.

Throwing off the clothes, passionate kissing, the usual stuff. I barely bat an eye anymore. It always ends badly, and that's when she comes to her senses for a bit. He wasn't bad-looking, I admitted; ok I peeked. Just once. More than that would be creepy.

"Oooh..."

"Yeah, yeah... oh yeah..."

I closed my ears. I was good at it by that point. Went back to my plant. I was trying to splice a garlic plant onto a tomato - hey, presto, you could have instant tomato sauce if it worked, and then I could snub my nose at Harvard! Ok, so the "Allium" and "Solanaceae" families aren't too close together and I'd most likely create a garlic that'd put you to sleep or a tomato that would lower your blood pressure too much, if it even worked at all. I didn't get that at the time.

After four days, I didn't have anything but slop. The tomato goop tasted awful, and it completely destroyed the garlic somehow. I didn't get it but then I was no genius. But then, I could always say I was smarter than Boyfriend Sixteen, who predictably came galumphing into the kitchen in his wife-beater that morning, scratching a little pot belly. "Unh," he grunted, and before I could say anything, he grabbed the latest results of my testing and downed them, stalking back out again.

Mom was at least smarter. She does play for the Pops Orchestra, after all; third viol. I'm always amazed how she's able to protect that thing, and she's a master at makeup, hiding bruises all these years, boyfriend to boyfriend. She's smart, but she has awful taste in guys. "Any luck?" she asked me, not touching anything, which is what you're supposed to do in a "lab".

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