1. My mom's answer to my insisting I should be able to do something because my friend David could: "If David stood on his head in the middle of the street at three in the morning in his underwear, would you?" Probably would have.

2. If you drank out of the house or did not wash your hands after using the bathroom, you would get something called the epizeutics (wonder what the spell checker will do with that word?) No one knew what the epizeutics was, but we knew we did not want to get it.

3. If I left a door to the house open, she would ask if I was born in a barn. It took me 16 years to come up with the response of "I don't know, you were there." I thought this was hilarious, she did not.

4. One I never could figure out was when she would go to the refrigerator, pull out some left over, and say to me "Here, eat this before it spoils." Uh, Mom, just how soon is that gonna happen?

5. If I didn't study, get good grades and finish school, I would wind up digging a ditch for a living. If I came home late without calling, she would be worried that I was lying in a ditch somewhere.

My mom had a big thing about ditches.