The time my mother called me a loser.

This is one of my favorite stories.

Once upon a time I guess I couldn't keep track of things. This is still sort of true. I'm not a pack rat at all, but I have a hard time putting things away. Laundry, groceries, shoes, clothes I just pulled out of the closet. I hate doing it. Ohhh it bores me now to even think about it. When my sister and I used to share a room you knew which clothes in the closet belonged to me because after I finally hung them up after weeks, they were half on a hanger and shoved into the closet, crumpled and carelessly wedged between the other clothing items. And Ashley's were always neat and straight. And it made us laugh. I am what I am.

So I've never been terribly organized but I think i have my own system. I usually know where things are but if you move them, of course i won't anymore. Makes sense to me. And my mom would clean up and move things and therefore i no longer knew where they were. This still happens, except with Sean (who is NOT my mother nor is he anything like a mother to me, for the record). Sean is a bit more neat than I, and I think because he enjoys it, he often goes on a cleaning/organizing rampage and I often have to call him in the middle of the day and ask where _____ is. I'm like a small child.

Back to the story. When I was young, my mother went shopping one day, in search for a birthday gift for me. What I wanted was my own towel. Yes, I dream big. No toys, no barbies. A towel. This either makes me seem really weird or super poor. Not that there's anything wrong with that. She went into the shop and asked the girl, and this is where that fateful phrase was uttered:

"Do you have a brightly colored towel? My daughter's kind of a loser."

Now. What does this mean? What does this mean for my self-esteem when she later recounted the story for all of us? (And why would a brightly-colored towel make me cool?) My mom thinks I'm a loser. Harsh. I always thought I was a winner but what now? Well, fortunately I had a strong sense of self. Also, I took great pleasure in woe-ing and lamenting about being a middle child (and not even right in the middle but on the end/middle--a more ambiguous position) and being totally ignored and unfavored. So this was AWESOME and absolutely delighted me. My mom told some stranger that i'm a loser.

We had a good laugh and of course she meant that i lose things. My mom has this wonderful knack of phrasing things slightly weird so that they come out sooo the opposite of something she would ever mean to say, and it's hilarious. (She once unknowingly bought my 13-year-old nephew a t-shirt that said "wise" and then had a picture of a donkey below it. Again: AWESOME.) And, gladly, I seem to have totally inherited this trait from her. Things just come out wrong and weird sometimes. I heart you mom, even though you think I'm a loser.