In honor of this coming Sunday I decided to write a column on Mother’s Day. And I couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to write about Mother’s Day than by using the same technique that I use in celebrating it: specifically calling my sister and asking what I should do. My sister and I have a special relationship when it comes to familial holidays and birthdays.

Usually our method begins about a week before the event; my sister gives me a call and informs me that it’s Father’s Day, my brother’s graduation or her birthday, whatever the case may be. Then I say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and I haven’t really come up with any good ideas.” Then she says. “Oh, that’s ok. I got Mom a card and a present.” Then I say. “Oh, good idea! That’s what I was going to suggest. Could you sign my name to the card? Preferably on top so it looks like I signed first? Thanks.” Then I tell her that I’m going to pay for part of the present, and she pretends to believe me.

While on paper, this is clearly the perfect system, there are problems, like the fact that my mom forgets my name and wonders who that guy is who signed my sister’s card. The reason that I use this system is because my mother lives 2,500 miles away. This same distance factor is what inhibits my mom from expressing her gratitude for my gratitude. In other words, there’s no Mother’s Day after-party, which as we all know usually involves whatever the “good son” wants for dinner.

You’re probably thinking, “Wow, James. Your mother is just too far away. You should just give up on Mother’s Day.” Well, distance hasn’t stopped my grandmother from sending me cookies every month, and it’s certainly not going to stop me from celebrating Mother’s Day in true kiss-up fashion. That is why I have decided that on behalf of all of the students from out of state whose mothers are hundreds or thousands of miles away, I am going to appoint an on campus “mother.”

In order to adopt an on-campus mother you must first begin by deciding just exactly what it is that defines being a mother, a topic which I happen to be an authority on since that time that I went to the emergency room for a knee injury and they didn’t have any room so they put me in the maternity ward and left me there for three hours before the doctor could see me. That was definitely a character building experience. Anyways, I have narrowed down the qualifications of being a mother to three characteristics: someone who will take care of you when you’re sick, someone who will listen to any ridiculous thing you say and pretend like they are interested, and someone who can sit around in her pajamas all day and still say that she is working.

After careful consideration, I ruled out the IT Department because a big part of qualifying for this position is that you have to at least pretend that the question that I just asked wasn’t the dumbest question that you heard all week. This leaves my roommate who works at Common Grounds and the Health Center. Since I feel that my roommate could be considered more of a listening ear at the local watering hole type of personality and the fact that the people at the Health Center can wear scrubs (which is as close to pajamas as a professional can get), I have decided to adopt the Health Center as the campus mother.

So for all of you out of state students, this week is Mother’s Day. As your brother in studies, I feel the need to remind that we really should do something nice for “Mom” this week. I would normally suggest flowers, but since a statistically significant part of the Health Center staff is male, maybe we should go with brownies. So if anyone wants to buy a card for them, please sign my name on the top with little x’s and o’s. Also, you should probably actually call your own real mother; my sister can only do so much.