10 Signs Your Mom is Cooler Than You

Image via Complex Original

I’ve got a sweet tooth the size of Mount St. Sugar Castle. (And that’s a real place, so don’t bother fact-checking me, okay, tough guy/gal?) Anyways, yeah, so a sugar palate this sophisticated absolutely requires a pro behind the rolling pin, and ol’ Momma B is just that. In fact, she’s more than a pro. She’s an innovator. She’s the Steve Wozniak of deliciousness. She’s constantly taking little tidbits and tips from all corners of the culinary community and infusing her own spin on them. I’d cite specifics, but then I’d have to make you part of my family, and I’m not sure you’re ready for that. She bakes for the love of the golden brown crust and that’s it. It doesn’t matter if I’m not hungry, on a diet, or not even in the same state. Once she gets inspired, it’s being made and I’m sampling it. You’d be surprised at how well a three layer coconut cake with strawberry frosting and toasted coconut holds up in a FedEx overnight box.

I couldn’t possibly have any more love for the golden god of two decades of sitcom supremacy that is Dr. Frasier Crane. Well, I could it I was my mom. And if at this point you’re tuning out ’cause you’re not feeling “The Frase,” stop right there. You don’t have love DFC to know how awesome it is to love something almost as much as your mom does. Because all that means is you’ll learn something new about your favorite thing every time you visit home. So for me it’s finding out that the opening title animation of every episode is different. For you, it might be that glue is great on mac n’ cheese. Who knows, to each their own mom.

“Road rage” is a strong term. I prefer “Road Elevated, Yet Controlled Intensity.” After decades of commuting to and from work, my mom has developed a particular set of skills that make her an “inconvenience” for people that suck at driving. Whereas I on the other hand, take a more passive aggressive, don’t-make-eye-contact-if-my-life-depended-on-it approach to coping with the frustrations of the open road. A composed yet impassioned mom behind the wheel is a beautiful thing to witness, but a terrifying thing to on the receiving end of.  I’m sorry, everyone that has cut her off since 1986.

Similar to the skill-set developed during her 30-year-and-counting stint of bobbing and weaving through four lanes of intense highway traffic, my mom’s ability to navigate a conversation with a customer service rep of any discipline is nothing short of amazing. Having come up in the “I’m gonna write a letter!” era, she has mastered the art of coming out on top regardless of the communication medium. The biggest difference between mom's approach and mine is the tone of voice. I will almost immediately resort to yelling—which, in the moment, feels wonderful—but doesn’t often result in a positive outcome for Jason. My mom, on the other hand, gives every harbinger of helpfulness a real stern talking too. And let’s be honest, there’s nothing more terrifying than a disappointed mom pointedly explaining to you why she’s disappointed.

Moms can handle anything, all the time, forever. You don’t commit, what is essentially, a year of your life to creating an entirely new human and not quietly scoff at life’s inevitable curveballs. I can barely handle a direct deposit going through late, let alone “Jason’s Financial Crisis of 2009” without a crippling panic attack. But every time something unexpected came hurtling towards me, mom came through with a reasonable solution to the problem. So really, Moms for president.

She may not be considered an early adopter, but she’s an avid adopter nonetheless. Once mom commits to allowing a technological innovation into her life, there is no stopping her. For better or worse. I say that last part because when your mom can text on a flip-phone faster than I can on a computer, there’s a problem…and it’s me. Sure, she may need the occasional FaceTime tutorial to kick things off, but who doesn’t? I won’t even begin to tell you how long I stubbornly struggled through my first Mac before finally admitting my gross incompetence to an overly pleased IT guy. So if you’ve got a mom out there still on the bottom half of the technological learning curve, give Momma B a call. Those two will be navigating an Apple TV like Magellan navigated the high seas of wherever he went.

I’ve always been a complete mess, stains-on-clothing wise. I just barrel through meals and life and wooded areas with such reckless abandon that I almost always come out looking like Pigpen just finished eating ketchup packets inside a dumpster. And more often than not, I’d go crawling back to the Wizard of Wash that is mom for some help. Well, as good as she is at vanquishing stains for all eternity, she realized pretty early on that she couldn’t be bothered with cleaning up my seemingly endless messes. So she threw me to the spin cycle wolves, as they say. (Actually, no one says.) She armed me with the tools and the occasional insider knowledge, and let me figure it out for myself. She knew one day I would be an adult—alone in this world but still an absolute disaster—and would need to solve my own dirt dilemmas. Good moms help, but great moms let their child screw up until they have no choice but to help themselves.

And boy am I stupid. It’s so amazing to spend some time reminiscing over the years and years of me trying to pull the proverbial wool over ma duke’s eyes. The excuses I came up with. The reasons why I needed something or had to be somewhere. I mean, it’s astounding that she let me believe I was right all those times. Actually, now that I think about it, she only let me believe I was right in situations that were relatively harmless. In every other situation, however, she dropped that mom hammer real quick. A good mom knows when to let her kid be stupid and when to put a stop it immediately. I have not yet learned that as I allow myself to be surrounded by stupidity day in and day out. Granted, I have no kids of my own being dumb, rather the adult kids of other parents being the idiots. Which is almost worse. I think I need to call their moms.

My mom has the ability to turn everything into a factory outlet. And if she’s at a factory outlet, she turns that into a big store with a pile of free stuff in it. Maybe it’s because my mom had me a young age, or simply because moms are conditioned by nature to sniff out a bargain, but she never ceases to amaze me with the deals she finagles. What sets apart her deals from just a regular ol’ deals is quality. She always keeps the quality level on the good good no matter what. Me? I’m more a pay full price then eat cheese sandwiches for a month kind of guy. But everyday I feel like I’m getting closer to my inner mom. Yes, I know I’m a man, but a every good man has a little mom inside of him screaming, “Put that down, idiot. You can get it cheaper at Marshalls.”

Dude, she’s just mom. She might be corny at times, she might annoy the crap out of you at other times, but she’s still mom. And moms will forever be infinitely cooler than the children they’ve raised simply because they've had to deal EVERYTHING we’ve thrown at them throughout our entire lives. If that still doesn’t convince you that your mom is cooler than you, then go get another dad.