Mom and I Are Both Hoarders

Mom hoards boxes. I hoard embarrassing childhood memories

Photo by Edgar Soto on Unsplash

Mom hoards boxes. It’s always a running joke in our family during gift-giving events.

“Oh, thanks for the box of cereal.”

“Hey, how did you know I love s’mores pop tarts?”

Every box is a gift box in her eyes. That’s how I figured out Santa wasn’t real. Would Santa really fill an oatmeal canister with doll clothes? It seemed a little too coincidental to me.

Other than the realization that Mom was Santa Clause, I never gave much thought to her creative gift-wrapping antics, until the day she tried to ruin my life with one small box.

My best friend, Nikki, lived three doors down from me my entire childhood. (If you now have the song “Kryptonite” in your head, you have officially replaced Nikki as my BFF.) I basically lived at Nikki’s house. Every day after school we took over her living room and watched Total Request Live on MTV to study dance moves for our next music video.

I still have the home movie of our rendition of Destiny Child’s “Jumpin Jumpin” and if I had a VHS player I would bust that bad boy out right now and dance right along with it. I’d probably dislocate my hip in the process, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

I never paid much attention to Nikki’s older brother Dan until I turned twelve. Dan was a year older than us and I started noticing things about him with a fresh set of bifocals.

The way his electric blue braces sparkled when he said “Get in my belly” every time he ate a Hot Pocket. The way he slurped in his spit and became asthmatic when he talked about Dragon Ball Z. When did Dan become such a stone-cold fox?

I knew Dan would have never intentionally invited me to his 14th birthday party, but I was there when his parents were making the guest list, so I happily accepted my pity invite.

I had been going through a bit of a phase during that time period. I was tired of being teased for not letting some of my childish habits go, so I decided to mature FAST. It drove Mom crazy.

Suddenly, everything I previously loved was stupid. Mom would buy me a shirt she thought I might like and…