Friendly reminders from my mother

You know those occasional notes mom leaves around the house telling you various things like how the leftover lasagna is in the fridge or how Carmen Electra called for me while I was gone?

My mom, however, does this on a daily basis and it usually involves something so random and unimportant that I sometimes have to read it a few times to see if it's actually what she wrote.

"Sam -- Went to bank. Should be back soon. The peaches are good. -- Mom (insert smiley face)."

It's notes like these that if someone were to break into our house and read it, they'd think Sam was a kindergartener who enjoyed eating assorted fruits while watching Dora The Explorer reruns.

And what amuses me even more is that she usually comes home while I'm reading the note.

"Oh, hey hon. I left you a note there just in case you got home before me,"she'll say.

"I saw," I'll say, grabbing a peach off the counter and turning the TV on (sans Dora).

One of the more recent notes had me wondering if it's just her fondness for pens and paper that has her leaving me notes constantly.

Either that or I seriously think we're related to the person who invented writing and the gene has been passed on to her. Whoever it was probably left the same notes to their kids on the walls of a cave thousands of years ago.

Scientists have actually been trying to decipher this cave art and understand what kind of culture these people lived in when in reality my mom, the MacGyver of motherly notes, could probably glance at it and tell them exactly what it meant.

If there was a picture of a buffalo, a tree and a rock, she'd simply say, "Well, if memory serves me correct, this means that the mother went to the bank and should be back shortly."

"Is that all?" the scientists would ask with excitement.

"No," she'd reply. "The peaches are good."

The note she most recently wrote to me was influenced by something I did in the morning before I left for work. I have this bad habit of drinking stuff straight out of the carton, whether it is milk or orange juice.

So on that particular morning I opened a new orange juice and took a swig of it before leaving.

I came home to find this: "Sam, dishes in dishwasher are clean. I left you a note on the orange juice. I should be home by 3:30. There is (insert long list of food) to eat. See you later. Joe and I may get by Wal-Mart. Call if you want something. I wrote down shampoo."

I knew what the note on the juice was going to be about, simply because she's always afraid she's going to buy something without a seal and that it's going to be infested with SARS.

It's when she doesn't leave me a note that I actually get worried. I immediately think of the worst. Was she kidnapped or in an accident? I can just imagine how the 911 call would go.

"I think my mom's been kidnapped!" I'd scream to the operator.

"Calm down, sir. What evidence suggests that she has been?"

"There is a slice of watermelon in the fridge and no note telling me there is!"

"Oh, don't worry, sir. She told me to tell you she'd be home by 5 p.m. and that there's also some Cool Ranch Doritos in the pantry."

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Sam DeReign is a sophomore at Southeast Missouri State University. Contact him at sdereign@semissourian.com.