Don't be hassling your mama. Did *you* have to wear a chador in Iran?

Please tell me this is translated from the original Yiddish.

whenever she travels, perhaps she likes the idea more than the fact.

Then a lottery ticket is the perfect gift.

Also, the entire genre of travel writing is just a slightly more elevated form of complaining about one damn thing after another.

I predict that this thread is totally going to break down along gender lines.

Except maybe for Cala, depending on how the wedding plans are going right now.

Don't you predict that about everything though?

Wait, what's my assigned gender role?

Third Man in Glasses

5: Absolutely not. I have been cruelly maligned by Certain People.

I also reject #2's implication that this is somehow an especially Jewish mother kind of conversation, because I can *totally* picture myself in Ogged's mom's role here.

Your mom sounds charming. What happened to you?

I can *totally* picture myself in Ogged's mom's role here.

Some things shouldn't be pictured, I feel.

I probably should have said "hear." Of course, *my* son would never be so cruel.

Maybe if you wore chadors more often he'd be more sympathetic to your plight in your declining years.

Obviously the inverse is true. Look at Ogged. Clearly wearing a chador just teaches your boy children to lack all respect for you.

ogged's mom is hot. Says so right in the thread.

er, post.

And now the thread as well.

"Of all the people who travel, you think none of them complain?" is Yiddish sounding syntax.

Huh. Shows what I know.

This dialogue didn't contain the telltale "You want I should..." syntactical unit.

Anyhoo, I vote that complaining travelling moms are MUCH BETTER than "oh everything is so wonderful!" travelling moms or "you're so blessed" travelling dads. It's completely impossible to think of an appropriate response to someone telling you that you live in paradise on earth and oh my god look at that! Wow! This is the MOST AMAZING THING EVER!!11!!! Plus it's just exhausting.

20 sounds like a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Trust me, nothing is further from the truth.

Stockholm Syndrome By Proxy --- when the hostage-taker falls in love with herself?

My mom is a whiny traveler. The subways rock a little bit and it makes her actually start to lose control of her bowels. She's young and healthy, but demands that people get up to give her a seat. All food is overpriced and all waiters are either inattentive or too snobby. Everything is too far and too hot and she's wearing painful shoes. But, even worse than the complaining is when she stops complaining and sits quietly, a little scrunched expression on her face, saying, "I'm fine. No, I'm fine."

We travel together a lot, though. I do love that woman.

The subways rock a little bit and it makes her actually start to lose control of her bowels.

You weren't traveling on the Continent, I gather.

I love transit. It makes my bowels stir with joy.

And we're off to the gender races: On road trips (namely from Richmond to Chicago and back) my father is always reluctant to stop and pee, despite his (and others') near-constant consumption of coffee. It's a matter of pride to make the drive in twelve hours, bladders be damned.

Ogged just laughs at everybody. It's surely nothing personal against his mother.

27: Actually I'm the "I hate to stop" road warrior in this family, though maternal feeling means that I have gotten much better about it on the grounds that PK needs to stretch his legs (and gets car sick).

Also, asking for directions mortifies me.

My mom is one of the "isn't everything so wonderful?" types when traveling. My dad, in keeping with his usual demeanor, never says a word.

Ogged just laughs at everybody

Nu, people are funny.

What's green, hangs on to the handrail, and complains?

The Wandering Jew?

Oh no, that made me laugh.

Anti-Semite.

The Wandering Jew isn't green.

Nu, so it's St. Patrick's Day.

Ok, but no way does the Wandering Jew hang on to the handrail!

35: Well duh.

It's a plant, Ben, you dummy.

Rabbi Eliezer held that to stand fast in a wandering vessel was, perforce, to wander and therefore was forbidden on the Sabbath.

I made it hard just to put it in there.

That's disgusting, Standpipe. Jesus.

This should move you to make a donation next time the Multiple Chiasmus telethon comes on.

When my wonderful Mom was in her seventies she led small groups of local women to visit Oaxaca. They stayed in Mexican-type (Mexican middle class, but non-tourist) accommodations found by a Mexican friend. One woman turned out to be a complaining traveller and their friendship didn't quite recover. Most of them loved it.

Your mom sounds like she likes to laugh.

ogged's mom and my mom should have a meet-up.

Since she was widowed 10(!) years ago, my mom has been to South Korea, Italy, China, France, the UK, and Ireland. She also took a bus trip following Lewis and Clark's route from St. Louis to the Pacific. She leaves on Sunday for a two-week trip through NW Russia and the Baltic states.

How cool is that? I love my mom.

Retiring from being a flight attendant lends a different perspective to the whole traveling thing. Mom's been very much enjoying the last couple of of years, as the first time in forty years she wasn't jet-lagged.

She would also, if introduced to Ogged's mother while traveling, involuntarily snap into a blur of efficient improvement of whatever it was that was bothering Madame O., while quietly contemplating violence. Best they should never meet.

Hey Chopper, I believe I was at the beach when your baby arrived. Congratulations, she's beautiful.

Blogtwins! Or close enough. Twelve years from now they can meet at summer camp, and wonder why they're the only two kids who know what WMYBSALB stands for.

Madame O.

I've always wanted to read Gustave Laubert's famous novel, but I haven't yet gotten around to it.

Still waiting for my gender role assignment. Am I supposed to not find the conversation funny?

My parents are good travelers, though they have a fairly geographically constrained zone of comfort. My grandparents left the country at least 2 or 3 times a year, and I need to get my hands on the canonical list of their trips from my grandfather's wake so I can start planning trips to countries they never went to.

My aunt, on the other hand, gets a little twitchy whenever leaving the safe confines of Berkeley.

I think it's cool when parents do crazy traveling. When my parents were first married, they used to go traveling for weeks at a time (and leave the kids with my dad's mom--awesome), and then when my dad was widowed (widowered) there was no traveling for a long while. Now that we're all grown up, he's back on the horse again. Right now I believe he's in Khartoum on some kind of art therapy mission. He's 63 and has way more energy than me. It's rad.