I know how these stories start. I’m supposed to tell you that my mom is the hottest person I know. That all my friends come over whenever they get the chance just to ogle her. I should say that I get mad at them for thinking of my mom in that way, but really I’m just mad because I think of her that way but could never do anything about it.
Unfortunately that’s not how this story starts.
My mom is not a hot woman. She’s forty years old and has a face that only a son could love. She’s the kind of woman who didn’t so much get hit with the ugly stick as she did fall out of the ugly tree, hitting every branch on her way down. With her face. Her hair is a dull brown and hangs lankly from her head. Her eyes are too small and too close together. Her nose and teeth all manage to be crooked, but not in the same direction.
The rest of her? That’s where the cliché might be true. But that’s getting ahead of myself. When this story starts I was as clueless as anyone else as to the charms that lay below my mother’s neck. I had never seen her in a bikini. Nor a swimming costume. Not even a tight t-shirt. Hell, whatever the weather she only ever seemed to wear baggy jumpers and jeans that just didn’t fit. Her choice of clothes didn’t accentuate her curves, it hid them under folds of spare fabric.