My mother's parents fled the Nazis in eastern Europe to land in the Depression, and thought it was a great deal. To say my mother grew up tough ... well, as Mr. T said, I pity the fool who takes her on.
A couple of incidents spring to mind.
When cable TV wa first introduced into our New Jersey neighborhood, people were reluctant to pay for the TV they'd always received for free. As an incentive, the cable TV company (can't recall which one) was offering free installation and the first month of service free. My mother took the offer, the cable company installed the line, and we enjoyed our first, free month.
We never received a bill the second month, either. Or the third. In fact, it was eight years before we heard from the cable company. They sent us a bill for eight years of service.
My mother ignored it.
Another bill came, then a third, each more strongly worded than the last, requesting, then demanding, eight years worth of payments.
Finally one day, after receiving no response from us, the cable company sent a man who said he was a lawyer for the cable company to our house to collect the money. I don't know if he really was a lawyer, but he had a suit and a briefcase, so it was certainly possible. He knocked on our door, large and confident.
He left smaller.
My mother explained to him — "explained" might not be a forceful enough word — why the cable company's sloppy bookkeeping and inability to bill its customers in a timely fashion wasn't her problem. She offered him two options: write off the eight years of service and begin billing us from that day forward, or remove the cable. He chose the first option.
The second incident has a bit of a back story.
When I was 16 I briefly worked as a janitor with a friend of mine, and one night we were cleaning the townhall. The townhall occupied half a building, and the other half was the police station. Through the thin walls we could hear everything that went on in the police station while we mopped and dusted, and we heard the plice talking to a woman who had, apparently, been raped. The officers were accusing her of having encouraged the attack by dressing provocatively and leading the perpetrator on. The woman was crying, both because of the attack and because of her treatment by the police, and I didn't blame her.
When I got home I was upset about what I'd overheard, and I told my mother, who promptly called a friend of hers who was a reporter for the local daily newspaper. The paper ran a story on the incident, a story which was critical of the police.
The next day I was walking along the main drag in town — it was a smallish town, about 15,000 people — when a police car pulled up alongside me. The officers inside asked if I was me (I was), and told me to get in the car. I don't recall it being a request.
They took me down to police headquarters and put me in a back room with a large (well over 6') police sergeant and two other officers. While the two other officers stood between me and the door the sergeant began alternatively questioning and screaming at me. Who was I? What had I overheard that night? How had I overheard it? Why did I talk to a reporter?
I was terrified. What were these men going to do to me?
Somehow my mother got wind of where I was — to this day I don't know how — and flew down to the police station, with my stepfather in hot pursuit. (He was worrid about what my mother might do to the police officers.)
My mother burst into the police station and rushed past the officer at the desk before he could say anything. She slammed into the room where I was being "interrogated" and laid into the police sergeant, who was easily a foot and a half taller and 150 pounds heavier than her.
He never stood a chance. Within 60 seconds it looked like a scene from the Six-Day Arab-Israeli war, with the Israeli tanks moving forwards and the Arab tanks moving backwards. My mother backed that sergeant into a corner and, if my stepfather hadn't run into the room at that time, I don't know what would have happened. She probably would have killed him.
The police left me alone after that.
Don't get me wrong: my mother is the sweetest, kindest, most loving and giving person I've ever met. But she never finishes second in an argument. Ever.
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