So,I go home today because I had a doctors appointment in columbia and I see my mom. She asks me if she has shown me her pop-up book. I immediately knew that the pop-up book was about sex, and I sure as balls didn't want to see it. I don't know why I knew it was about sex. I think that it was because if my mom thinks that a pop-up book is funny, it probably isn't some G-rated pop-up book with dinosaurs or children playing softball or penguins ice-skating or something. I look at her and tell her, "Mom, I don't want to see the pop-up book." She grabs it. She implores me to look. She opens it and laughingly says, "Rebecca and I were cracking up last night over this." Rebecca is my 15 year old sister. I say, "Mom, I do not want to see this pop-up book, and furthermore, I think its totally weird that you would look at this with Rebecca." She opens the book and a cardboard man and woman making love in the missionary position..popped up. She cracked up. I did not. I say again, but this time in a more serious and more confusedly ridiculous tone, "Mom, I am not looking at this. I am not looking at this. I am not looking at this." "Just look at this one, Dad thought this one was hilarious." Dad is my 56 year-old Dad. I accidently dart a glance and it is a pop-up depiction of a woman in a nurses uniform having strap on relations with a man leaning over a table in a kitchen. My mom laughs harder. I say, "mom this is fucking gross I don't want to look at this. I don't want to look at this. I don't want to look at this." I repeat. She pulls what looked like a cardboard tab at the bottom of one of the pages and says, "look at how this one moves". I didn't look. The whole thing about this situation, if you're still with me. The real kicker. Is that I knew. As soon as she said "pop-up book". That the fucking book. Was about sex. However. I don't know what's weirder. That my mom possesses this book. Or that I knew all along. Or that I looked at pop-up sex vignettes with my mom. Who was wearing a medical procedure mask. Because our house was being painted and she didn't want to inhale fumes.
