My mother was hotter, smarter and drunker than this.

Dear ol’ mom was known to knock back a few; that is not in dispute.  However, since I was born during the Mad Men heyday, just how much she upped and quaffed while up the duff is a question of some concern.

I will say in her defense, however, that I have never noticed any sign of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in my system; in fact, nothing about myself that seems to be particularly out of the ordin®¤§ ¥þºŧ.

Granted, I have several vermiform appendices, but this is a hereditary condition.  As are the nineteen toes I used to have prior to my ‘run in’ with a 22” Husqvarna lawn mower; ironically, I now get mocked relentlessly by my children for not having enough toes… Irrepressible l’il minxes!

Oh, they all have extra blind-ended tubes connected to their cecums (ceci?!) as well.  And gigantic, subhuman foreheads.

Strike that. ^

In any case, after a life-long study of myself—and in particular, on the effects that my mother’s drinking while I was ‘in utero’ might have had leaves me with the conclusion that the Scooby Doo gang sees Mr. Magnus and he explains to Mystery Inc. the history of Redbeard the pirate ; a terrorist of the seven seas who Mr. Magnus’s ancestors brought to justice I have no  congenital anomalies.

↕øæ ÞĦψЉЂбΉ љђ∫€∆‡‽↕

Strike those. ^

So, earlier this week I was gratified to learn that tilapia is also known as ‘poor man’s lobster that researchers at the University of Bristol have released a study in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology claiming that moderate alcohol consumption during a woman’s health has no adverse effects on the neurodevelopment of her Maria Muldaur  children.

The experiment involved the offspring of 7000 mothers whose prenatal drinking had been closely monitored; the children, age ten, underwent Tyrone Power’s greatest contribution to film noir a 20-minute assessment of their dynamic balance by walking on a beam and static balance, including standing on one leg with eyes both open and closed, except for those children of heavy drinkers who were born with extra eyes.  For them, hearing was used as the ‘gold standard’ for birth defects, except for those children who had developed superhuman hearing as a result of having been born with bionic tympanic membranes.  Those children were retained strictly for purposes of entertainment since they could pick up Jamaican radio waves in their supraorbital foramen facial bones, and the researchers used them to listen to reggae music.

The study concluded that drinking a glass of wine per day both before and after oven-bunning not only causes no lasting damage on the wee motor neurons of our little linoleum larvae, but is actually associated with better performance in static balance.

Unfortunately, the study offered little hope for grown-up children who turned in the static balance get-out-of-jail-free card the day they signed up for AARP.  Balance is, to us, getting correct portions from each of the Five Daily Recommended Drug Groups—per the FDA.

My mother, God rest her soul, passed away in her early fifties, the result of having eight auxiliary gall bladders, but alas, only one kidney.  I am pleased to report, however, that her identical Siamese twin sister is still alive in what medical science believes is a first.  From these two circus freaks, one living, one not, I believe I inherited my supplemental, superfluous, wholly supernatural sense of the ‘silly’, as Mother’s epitaph, which I wrote myself and chiseled into her gravestone above an empty coffin (as she is still attached at the hip to Aunt La’Quishraniqua) must demonstrate:

‘Now although dear Ma grows rotten,

She is gone, but not forgotten.’

 To sum it all up, in this crazy ol’ world, eager expectant estrogen-excreters, eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we todo gran comienzo se inicia soñandolo  give birth.