I thought everybody was familiar with this brilliant old meme, but I just discovered there are people who aren’t, so I’m posting it here. Since it’s a very old meme, I added a few of my own lines to spice it up. If you read it and have no idea what it is about, color yourself very lucky.

My mother taught me to believe in God: “Just pray your father doesn’t hear about this!”

My mother taught me to think logically: “Because I said so, that’s why.”

My mother taught me about eating disorders: “You will not leave the table until you finish what’s on your plate.”

My mother taught me not to be envious: “There are millions of kids in the world who’d kill to have such parents as yours.”

My mother taught me to face the future: “Just wait until I get home!”

My mother taught me the basics of self-healing: “If you don’t stop squinting, your eyes will stay stuck this way for good.”

My mother taught me how to be a mind reader: “Put on your hat! I know you are cold.”

My mother taught me to fit in: “Why can’t you be like normal kids?”

My mother taught me about self-esteem: “You are such a disappointment.”

My mother taught me to believe in myself: “I told you it wasn’t going to work.”

My mother taught me about love: “What do you see in this guy?”

My mother taught me the basics of genetics: “You turned out as bad as your father.”

My mother taught me about history: “When I was your age, I never disappointed my parents this way.”

My mother taught me how to grow up: “If you don’t eat vegetables, you’ll never grow up.”

My mother taught me to make friends: “I knew this new kid you are hanging out would be a bad influence on you!”

My mother taught me the love of learning: “I’ll buy it for you but only if you get a good grade in physics.”

My mother taught me to appreciate art: “Your music is giving me a head-ache.”

My mother taught me to anticipate the future: “You’ll understand this when you grow up.”

My mother taught me to dream: “I wish I had a kid who was more like my friend Anna’s son.”

My mother taught me about justice: “I hope your kids treat you as bad as you are treating your mother.”

I will never become truly American, I’m afraid. I’ve been living on this continent since 1998, and yet, there are realities that I am completely unaware of. Blogger P. rhoeas acquainted me with the phenomenon of truck nutz today.

Here is what they look like:

I don’t know what it says about me, but I’m totally into the pink ones. And to the professor who ridiculed me when I said, “In American roadtrip literature a car symbolizes a penis,” what can you say now?

From the following comment on Amazon, I discovered that the truck nutz are supposed to bring good luck:

These balls are a bit large when hung from the rearview mirror of my Prius. They obstruct vision a bit when they swing back and forth. Otherwise they work great. I’ve had quite a bit of luck since I swapped out the ole lucky rabbits foot.

You can find a great selection of them here.

A hilarious exchange between two of the funniest readers of this blog (you can find it here at the end of this thread) made me realize that people feel like being entertained at the moment. This makes sense since in the first week of the year nobody can be expected to be interested in heavy topics.

I, however, have no sense of humor left after spending all day long struggling first with my mid-point tenure dossier and then with my Canadian bank account. And unless you have a Canadian bank account, you cannot imagine the degree of aggravation it can produce. I’ve been swearing so much that I now completely lost my voice and can only croak like a sad, old crow.

So in order to come up with something funny for my readers, I had to turn to the search lines that bring people to my blog. This is a strategy that always delivers and it didn’t disappoint me this time. Here is what two individuals were searching for today:

I hope they found what they were looking for.