Shit My Mom Says

Today I had to attend a doctor's appointment with my mother and at the end we had to visit with the surgery coordinator because the doc scheduled a day surgery to clean out her incision that's not healing well.  I had to deal with the surgery coordinator a lot when her custom hip implant was so delayed, and the surgery coordinator was really an advocate for her.

So anyway, the surgery coordinator has a picture of her beautiful infant twins sitting on her desk.  And my mother decides to pop up and ask, "Is one of your twins black?"

The poor surgery coordinator looked shocked.

And I said, "you cannot ask questions like that."

And the sweet surgery coordinator said, "no, she just has a darker skin tone."

And she said, "do they have the same father?"

And the surgery coordinator just stared and said, "yes."

And so my mother says, "is your husband hispanic?"

And the surgery coordinator said, "no."

And so my mother says, "so is the mailman?"

And I said sharply, "Mother, you are not old enough or senile enough to be asking such offensive questions."

I guess I managed to shame her, because she apologized to the poor girl, who was very nice about it all, but I can't imagine what she was thinking.

Seriously, WTF is wrong with her? She's not senile, she's not on any drugs that seem to otherwise impair her judgment, she's only 61--so she grew up in the 60's and should be fully aware that interrogating anybody about their ethnicity or the origin of their children is inappropriate.

Supposedly she only has two more weeks here and then she goes back home.  Please god, let it be true.  She keeps joking about coming to stay with me and I flat out told her absolutely no way.