March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day was exactly 6 months to the day since my Mother died. I went over to my Dad’s house and had home-made corned beef and cabbage. He did a really good job with the corned beef. We talked about Mom for a bit. For me, some days, like that day, it felt like she had just died the day before. Other days for me, it’s like it has been years since she passed.

Not so for my Father. From what he told me, every day is like she had just died. I don’t fully comprehend it but I do think I understand what he’s getting at to a degree. You see, I knew my Mom my whole life of 46 years at the time, but I didn’t spend my whole life with her. In all honesty, the last decade or so, I limited my interactions with her because she would still try and tell me what I should do and how to live my life. I don’t have time for that shit.

My Father on the other hand, spent close to 50 years with that woman. I don’t know how he did it. He was and is, a greater Man than me. I couldn’t have done it for that long. Their relationship wasn’t exactly love falling off the apricot tree or something like that. In some ways, theirs was a relationship of convenience. Practical yes, not very romantic though. Oh I’m sure there were moments, especially when they were younger that love and romance was in the air, but time always marches on.

I’m not writing this to stroll down memory lane, at least not theirs. I’m writing it because of something my Mom said to me, about me many years ago. It’s been something that I haven’t thought about in a long, long time. Something she called me.

Allow me to humor you with a backstory first. Don’t worry Dear Reader, I’ll get to the point and hopefully quickly. I know you’ve got other articles to not read and pictures of thots and food to look at on Instagram…

So the story begins when I was back in college. I was a senior, so this was 1993-1994. My Mother had a co-worker at the time who had a daughter who was enrolling at the same college that I was attending. Now this young woman had something that not just everybody had at the time. She had a stalker. I guess this guy had been stalking her for years. She would find footprints outside her window, every time she changed her phone number, he would somehow find out what the new number was and the heavy breathing calls and whatnot would continue. I guess this shit went on for years. Now in order to hopefully circumvent this guy, she was coming to the school I was attending, but under a pseudoname. Nobody except for the Dean and the campus police knew who she actually was. Well, I knew as well because this young woman told me about this stalker and told me her real name as well as her fake name that she was traveling under.

Anyways, the mother of this young woman was a very religious woman and had led a very sheltered life. When she found out through my Mother that her daughter would be attending the same school as I was, she got all excited and had a moment of fantasy where she thought that it would be magnificent and wonderful if I and her daughter would happen to start dating, fall in love, and ultimately get married. It’s a wonderful fantasy, but a fantasy is all it was. My Mother put the brakes on that in a hurry.

“Oh Kitty, you haven’t met my son. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good kid, but he, well…He tends to corrupt people.”

I shit you not, that’s what she said to the mother of this young woman. She then came home and told me what she had said. I was like, “Gee, thanks Mom. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Don’t get me wrong Rob, you’re a good kid, but you do have this tendency to corrupt the people that you are around. I know you like to party on occasion, and I know that when you have guests over, you like to make them feel comfortable. You are a very good host. You never force anything on anyone, but you always ask them if they would like something. You always offer whatever is on hand, and you make it really easy to say yes to whatever it is you are doing.”

All of this is true. I do make it easy to go along with whatever it is that I’m doing. Would you like a drink? No? That’s okay. No problem. If you change your mind, just let me know okay? I’ve got one right over here for you if you want it.

How about now? Want that drink? No? No worries. Just let me know if you change your mind, I can whip you up something really yummy, really quick. It’s not a problem, honest. I used to tend bar so making drinks is my speciality. You sure you don’t want one? I’ve got this great one that is really tasty and you can’t even taste the alcohol. It’s quite the hit at the bar, I came up with it myself.

And if you don’t want it, you don’t want it, no problem, no pressure, no worries. More for me. And I let it go at that. 9 out of 10 times I would have you drinking with me within the hour.

So I was the Corruptor according to my Mom. I was good at it too. Still am. And not just with drinking. With a lot of stuff actually. But hey, if you don’t want to do it, that’s cool. No problem. Honestly I don’t give a shit if you do what I’m doing or not, I just don’t want you to feel left out is all. I just want you to enjoy yourself as much, or even more than I’m enjoying myself, and I enjoy shit a lot.

Initially when my Mom told me what she had told this young woman’s mother about me, I was a little butt hurt. Jesus, you would think that your own Mother would have good things to say about you, which in all honesty, my Mother did. She was realistic though. She was never one of those mother’s that said, “Oh my kid would never do that.” She was always of the opinion when somebody asked her if she thought I was capable of something, she was always like, “Well, I would hope I raised him better than that, but I wouldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t capable of it.”

She knew me well enough to know that I’m capable of a lot. Good, bad, and ugly.

So on March 17th, six months to the day since my Mom died, I heard her voice in my head, and it was this story about me being the Corruptor, that showed up. It brought a smile to my face and I won’t lie, it brought a couple of tears to my eyes.

I miss you Mom.

Oh, in case you were wondering:

That stalker? He got caught later that year. Turns out he was the young woman’s boss that she had been working for since she was 16 or so. Guy was married and had a young baby. He went to jail and I don’t remember if he ended up going to prison or not. He lost his marriage and custody of his child over the whole ordeal though.

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