Hannah has alerted me to the existence of a crazy parent story contest. Better yet, it appears to be crazy Asian parent themed. I had a lot to choose from, but I settled on the one about my dad’s bug repellent. I’m not even sure about the prizes offered in the contest, which are two DVDs for movies unknown to me. It’s about the principle.

The fact of the matter is, chiaroscuro and I have the craziest parents of anyone we know, and possibly anyone on the Internets. Sure, we weren’t fathered by Idi Amin or (s)mothered by Joan Crawford or anything; our parents are more or less good people. Being raised by these two individuals has taught me that good personhood does not necessitate sanity.

With that said, the latest little update in my mother’s mad life is that she wants to sue the Pennsylvania DMV.

According to my sister, the family agent stationed on the East Coast, the DMV has been putting pressure on my mother to register her car in the state of Pennsylvania. Fair enough, seeing as she’s been living there since August. The problem is that they will not allow her to register without a car title, and since my mother is still paying off the car, the car dealer has retained the title. My mother contacted the dealer, who then contacted the DMV and sent copies of the requisite title and proof of car ownership. The DMV claims to have not received said documents. All part and parcel of dealing with government office bureaucracy, which can be frustrating at best even for native English speakers.

chiaroscuro: So, she wants to sue them for assuming they could be lazy and give her the run around because they thought her english was bad
me: …
chiaroscuro: and that one call from a laywer and they would be scared and not be lazy anymore
me: Wait, why are they lazy? Aren’t they the opposite of lazy? if they are hassling her so much?

Setting the fact that one cannot simply sue others for being lazy, even in our litigious society; my mother’s logic can be a little, well, abstruse.

Back in the days of yore (high school), I toyed with the notion of going into law. I’m far too lazy for the metric ton of paperwork and research that such a field entails, of course, and I have yet another reason to be grateful I did not opt for a legal career. That being, my mother would call me up every day to sue people - everyone from her boss, who she likens to Ralph Fiennes’ character in Schindler’s List; the entire Vietnamese communities of Wichita and Harrisburg, PA for ‘gossiping about her’; the woman in line behind her at the grocery store who looked at her funny; the man on the street who looked like he was going to look at her funny; her King Lear-esque daughters * for conspiring against her; and, of course, the Pennsylvania DMV.

* - “But surely she wouldn’t have you sue yourself, would she? She can’t be that crazy.” Oh ho ho! Ha, it must be nice to have normal, sane parents.