Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  And we’ll eat too. Mother’s Day is the second-most-popular occasion to dine out (the first is birthdays), with 30 percent trooping to a restaurant to give mom a break.

  HOW TO CHOOSE?

  Dear Uncle John,

  I admit I’m not the best gift giver, but I thought I hit a home run last Mother’s Day, only it turns out I struck out big time. Who knew she wouldn’t like that new baseball mitt? I’d like to hit it out of the park this year, so do you have any help for picking the perfect present?

  Sincerely,

  Cleanup Hitter

  Dear CH,

  The best advice that I can give you is to do your research. What does mom like? A Yahoo survey showed that despite our good intentions, we have bad info when we go to get mom a gift. Eighty-eight percent wanted to give their mothers a gift this Mother’s Day but didn’t know the basics.

  For example:

  •50% of respondents couldn’t name their mother’s dress size.

  •35% didn’t know their mother’s favorite perfume and an additional 15% weren’t even sure if their mother wore perfume.

  •25% didn’t know their mother’s favorite color.

  •25% didn’t know which flower was mom’s favorite.

  So what can help Mother’s Day go well? Experts simply advise talking to mom and asking her what type of day she’d prefer. Treat her like the individual she is and tailor your gift to her individual preferences, not yours. Experts also suggest that honoring mother all year will help all to relax and enjoy Mother’s Day, since there will be less pressure on you to make this one day perfect.

  WHAT NOT TO GIVE?

  Dear Uncle John,

  I often read advice about what to give my mom for Mother’s Day, but I never see advice on what NOT to give. What are the worst things you can give?

  Sign me,

  Not Wanting to Be the Worst

  Dear NWBW,

  An interesting question! Several online polls gave moms the chance to sound off about the worst Mother’s Day gifts they’ve ever received. Odds are the best things to avoid are:

  •Nothing. Mom will always remember when you do nothing, so do something, anything, lest you run the risk of forever being reminded of that Mother’s Day when you did nothing.

  •Kitchen and cooking supplies. If mom loves to cook, this isn’t a bad idea. But if she dreads time in the kitchen, pots and pans are not the way to go.

  •Gardening tools and housecleaning supplies. Avoid gifts that create more work or summon up images of drudgery! So no vacuums, toilet brushes, or rakes unless they’re specifically asked for. It’s just too risky.

  • Socks. If they don’t work as kids’ presents—surprise!—they don’t work for moms either.

  •Clothes. It’s tough to buy clothing for other people, especially if you’re trying to surprise them. Best to give mom a gift certificate to her favorite store if fashion is her thing.

  GIFT IDEAS, PLEASE

  Dear Uncle John,

  Help! I’ve asked my mother many times what she would like for Mother’s Day. She just smiles and says that she’ll love whatever I give her. Since I’m not a little kid anymore, I’m not sure that answer really applies to me. Can you help?

  Sign me,

  Damage Control

  Dear DC,

  What a pickle! You’ve tried to do your homework and you’ve been thwarted. So we did some digging and found some great ideas for Mother’s Day gifts that fit all kinds of budgets. For the kind of present you can tie a bow on, here’s what we found moms liked:

  •Flowers (her favorite blossoms can be so sweet)

  •Perfume (just be sure to get the kind she actually wears)

  •Electronics (seems DVD players and digital cameras are hot tickets!)

  •Jewelry (an option for the husbands in the crowd)

  •Homemade cards (probably best for the grammar school set)

  Other moms prefer gifts of events or outings. Here are just a few:

  •Breakfast in bed (tried and true)

  •Sunday brunch (a nice option for the culinarily challenged)

  •Dinner (at her favorite restaurant, not yours)

  •Quality family time (her definition, not yours)

  •Spa trip (massages and wraps and facials, oh my!)

  •Help with chores (a classic)

  Whatever you do, you’ll be sure to make mom feel special!

  Ghostly Highway

  Have you heard this oft-told urban highway legend? As the story goes, a visibly injured woman flags down a couple driving on the highway. She tells them that there has been a terrible car accident. She fears that her husband is dead, but begs them to save her baby who’s still alive. Leaving the hurt woman with his wife, the husband rushes to wreckage and pulls the baby from the car.

  When he returns to his car, the injured woman is gone. His wife tells him that she saw the mother follow him back to the ditch. Only then does the man recall that he saw two adults slumped in the front seats of the car. He gives the baby to his wife and runs back to the scene, but finds a dead man and woman, buckled into their seats with seatbelts. The dead woman is the same one who had enlisted his help to save her baby. This popular legend illustrates the belief in the power of a mother’s love—which can reach from beyond the grave.

  Lights! Camera! Action Moms!

  Five maternally fueled action films that say: Don’t make mom angry. You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.

  The Mom: Sarah Connor

  The Movie: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

  The Story: In this sci-fi/action classic, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the hard-bodied mother of John Connor, a 10-year-old kid who will one day save the world from the evil machine empire, must keep her son from being killed by a time-traveling, shape-shifting robot. Luckily, the robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger is on her side in this movie! Aside from being a lean, mean, fighting machine, Sarah is actually an interesting exploration of parental responsibility—she loves her kid but comes off as incredibly cold because she must give him the military skills he needs to survive. Leave it to writer/director James Cameron to skillfully take the most masculine of film genres and turn it into a study of maternal duties and failings—right under the nose of the teenage boys in the audience. Shhhh. Don’t tell.

  The Mom: Samantha Caine, a.k.a. Charly Baltimore

  The Movie: The Long Kiss Good Night (1996)

  The Story: Just your average mom, Samantha Caine

  (Geena Davis) bakes cookies, teaches school . . . oh, and suffers from amnesia. She discovers little by little that in her past life—the one she doesn’t remember—she was Charly Baltimore, a pistol-packin’, cigarette-smokin’ badass for one of the more disreputable parts of the U.S. government. Once she gets her memory back, it’s only a matter of time before some old nemeses track her down and use her sweet little daughter as bait to draw her out in the open. Now, if you knew a woman was a super-assassin, would you threaten her kid? Yeah, neither would we. Don’t let that scare you away: a bit bloody and violent, but probably a little better than you expect, even if it was directed by Renny Harlin, Davis’s then-husband, of Cutthroat Island infamy.

  The Mom: Evelyn O’Connell

  The Movie: The Mummy Returns (2001)

  The Story: This light-hearted sequel to 1999’s The Mummy finds librarian turned tombraider Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) happily married to adventurer Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and raising a precocious little boy. Then that awful mummy from the first film rises from the dead yet again, and this time he needs a bracelet to reveal the location of a secret undead army—a bracelet strapped to the arm of Evelyn’s kid. Kids. They’re always getting into something. The boy’s kidnapped (of course), and Evelyn and Rick work as a team to bring their boy back home. Maternal action highlights include Evelyn picking off bad guys with a rifle as Rick rescues their kid and duking it out with the Mummy’s reincarnated girlfriend both in the 20th century and ancient Egypt. That’s right, she kic
ks butt across four millennia!

  The Mom: The Bride

  The Movie: Kill Bill (2003)

  The Story: In this bloody Quentin Tarantino–directed flick, Uma Thurman stars as “the Bride,” a pregnant woman whose name we never learn and who also happens to belong to an elite team of assassins. The Bride is, quite naturally, getting married when the film opens. Unluckily for her, her workplace isn’t so family friendly, and her former coworkers crash the wedding to bump her and her guests off. They don’t quite do it . . . and the Bride wakes up several years later, widowed, without her child, and thirsting for revenge. And boy, does she wreak havoc. Despite the violence, interesting threads of maternity and family wind their way through the film. Aside from Uma’s character, another assassin turns out to be a mother, which has future consequences as the two women battle to the death. Another character’s backstory has her avenging the death of her mother and father at the hands of the Japanese “Yakuza” crime gangs. Kill Bill is only part one of the story, so be on the lookout for part two to find out what happens to the Bride.

  The Mom: Heather Langenkamp

  The Movie: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

  The Story: If you prefer your maternal action with a horror edge, this twist on the Nightmare on Elm Street series may float your boat. Actress Heather Langenkamp (who played the teenage heroine in the very first film) is living the happy life of a B-list actress and mom, when suddenly Freddy, the monstrous villain from the film series, is loosed into the real world. Seems that when the movie studio killed off the film series (presumably with 1991’s Freddy’s Dead), it allowed Freddy’s evil energy out into reality, where it could invade the dreams of the filmmakers. And since Freddy famously feeds on the children of those who killed him, well, that’s bad news for Langenkamp’s little boy. But it’s not as if our heroine is going to meekly offer up her kid. This leads to her and Freddy going at it in a confrontation that twists reality and Hollywood horror fantasy. Considered one of the better Nightmare films by horror fans, it’s doubly spooky for moms.

  The Single Mother of Invention

  It sounds like an urban legend, but it’s not. A Monkees’ mother invented Liquid Paper!

  Bette Nesmith never was a whiz at typing. Not that she cared much. She was going to be an artist just like her mother, not a secretary. Unfortunately, Bette’s plans fell through in 1946, when she found herself divorced and supporting her young son, Robert Michael, otherwise known as Mike. She desperately needed a good job.

  TOUGH PRECOMPUTER TIMES

  Opportunities were limited for women in the late 1940s. Bette took up typing and shorthand and became a secretary. To earn extra cash, she worked as a freelance artist. But Bette was the family’s sole provider and found it tough to make ends meet. As Mike later said bluntly, “We were dirt poor . . . just miserable.”

  When Bette became executive secretary to the chairman of the board of Texas Bank and Trust, she was determined to keep her job—despite those darned electric typewriters. Back in the dark ages, before desktop computers existed, the only way to type a letter was on an actual typewriter. Electric typewriters powered keys that flew quickly with a light touch, but they also had carbon ribbons that made typos tough to erase. Bette often made typing errors, and when she erased them the paper would get smudged.

  MISTAKES CAN BE ARTISTIC

  Bette wished she could cover up secretarial mistakes the way artists did. They simply painted over their errors and no one was the wiser. One evening she had a brainstorm, and using her artist’s skills, she mixed tempera paint (an opaque water-based paint) to a shade that perfectly matched her boss’s business stationery. She put her solution in a small bottle and brought it to work, along with her watercolor brush. Now when Bette made a typing mistake, she simply painted it out with her new correcting fluid, which she called “Mistake Out.”

  Bette’s boss didn’t notice her corrected mistakes, but other secretaries did. They wanted some of that correction paint for themselves! Eventually Bette began selling her concoction and founded the Mistake Out Company. After work she turned her kitchen into a laboratory and used her electric mixer to whip up new batches of paints and chemicals until she had her product perfected. In the garage, her son Mike and his friends used ketchup squeeze bottles to fill little bottles of Mistake Out and supply the ever-increasing orders.

  LIQUID PAPER? I’M A BELIEVER

  Bette tried to sell her idea to IBM, but they turned her down. Realizing she’d have to manufacture and market her product herself, Bette went back to work after work. Now, along with learning about paint and paper, she read up and sought advice on marketing. In a flash of inspiration, Bette renamed her product “Liquid Paper.” A trade magazine published the story of her little business and she received her first big order. General Electric wanted 400 bottles in three colors!

  Bette took the plunge and devoted all her time to Liquid Paper—a risky move, as her business still wasn’t profitable. But Mike was a big boy now and could support himself, so Bette was really able to focus on the business. Luckily, she had help. In 1962 she married Robert Graham, who helped her run the company.

  Mike also married, then went off to California to try his luck in the music business. And boy, did he make mom proud! He rose to fame in The Monkees, a sitcom about four young musicians in a pop band. The tall Monkee in the goofy wool hat, Mike was an instant star, known for his dry humor and quick wit. The show was a huge hit and so were the group’s albums and singles, like “I’m a Believer.”

  Meanwhile, back in Dallas, Bette’s hard work was finally paying off. As word spread that Liquid Paper could correct typing mistakes, business skyrocketed. Eventually Bette was selling so many millions of bottles of Liquid Paper that she moved her operation into an automated plant. Next, the company built an international headquarters and produced 500 bottles of correcting fluid a minute.

  While Liquid Paper brought in wealth, generous Bette set up foundations to help other women. She never forgot the hard times she and Mike once faced. And as a single mom, it was no accident that her company was one of the first to offer on-site child care. Said Bette, “Most people in my income bracket build estates. I can’t understand why. My estate will be what I can do for others. I want to see my money working, causing progress for people.”

  STILL SAVING SECRETARIES

  In 1979 Bette Nesmith Graham sold her corporation to Gillette for over $47 million, allowing her to continue her charitable work. Meanwhile, her invention continues to save the jobs of the world’s secretaries—one little bottle at a time.

  TV Moms II: Groovy Gals

  Take a short broom ride, put on some polyester duds, and crank up the pop tunes!

  In the 1960s and 1970s, moms began to loosen up a bit on the small screen. Witches, mixed families, and rockin’ road trips all made the scene!

  SAMANTHA STEPHENS: WITCHY MAMA

  The Show: Bewitched (1964–1972)

  Mere mortal Darrin Stephens married his beautiful wife, Samantha (played by Elizabeth Montgomery), only to discover that she was a witch who could cast a spell with just a twitch of her snub nose. Samantha tried to please him by giving up witchcraft to be a normal wife and mother, but her mother, Endora, was hell-bent on getting Darrin out of the picture so Sam could stay supernatural. Every week, Samantha’s twitching nose would cause all witchcraft to break loose in the Stephens’s household—usually saving Darrin and their children, Tabitha and Adam. Throughout the series, Sam remained true to herself—keeping both her powers and her husband. A powerful statement for the times!

  Fun Fact: Agnes Moorehead, the actress who played Sam’s meddling mom, also played a mother on the big screen in Citizen Kane. She played Charles Foster Kane’s mother.

  CAROL BRADY: LOVELY LADY

  The Show: The Brady Bunch (1969–1974) Carol Brady (played by Florence Henderson) mothered the Brady Bunch, of course! As the famous theme song explains, Carol was a “lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovel
y girls” when she married a widower, Mike Brady, who “was busy with three boys of his own.” The series and its theme song were much loved, but the portrayal of a mixed family endeared it to kids whose own families were a bit more “blended” than the traditional nuclear family.

  A stay-at-home mom, Carol was a busy lady nonetheless. She had Alice, the maid, to help with cooking and cleaning, so she could spend time promoting local political causes, singing in church, and indulging her creative side through needlepoint and sculpture. Carol was a mom who liked to use her brain. (Though some would argue that the scriptwriters didn’t.)

  Fun Fact: While we know that Mike Brady is a widower, it is never revealed in the TV series how Mrs. Brady’s first marriage ended. What ever happened to the father of those three very lovely girls?

  SHIRLEY PARTRIDGE: ROCKIN’ MOM

  The Show: The Partridge Family (1970–1974) TV moms could be pop stars too, as The Partridge Family showed us in 1970. Widowed Shirley Partridge (played by Shirley Jones) needed money and so she formed a band with her five kids and got into the music biz. In an old painted school bus with a sign that read: “Caution: Nervous Mother Driving,” Shirley took her kids on tour and into music success with only a few sour notes.

  With hits like “I Think I Love You” and “I Woke Up in Love This Morning,” mom and the kids were one of the TV families who didn’t rely on mom’s husband to provide for the family. Though Shirley didn’t behave too much differently than other sitcom moms, her financial independence signaled that changes were coming.