Permission Slips by Sherri Shepherd & Laurie Kilmartin

Author:Sherri Shepherd & Laurie Kilmartin [SHEPHERD, SHERRI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000
ISBN: 9780446558792
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

So write yourself a permission slip to be blunt. “If you’re trying to get with me, blink twice.”

The intern learns a lesson

I’m still young enough to forget that I’m old. And it’s humiliating to be reminded that you aren’t young. There was an intern at The View who had just graduated from college, no older than twenty-three. She was standing next to me as I was saying good-bye to some audience members.

“Sherri, is this your daughter?” asked a lady from the front row.

I couldn’t answer. I wanted to say, “Excuse me, I’m the mother of a three-year-old, not a twenty-three-year-old.” But what really made me mad was the intern. She should have said, “Oh, Sherri’s way too young to be my mother!” Instead, she giggled.

“No, she’s not my mom, but she could be.”

OH REALLY?

Ha ha. I laughed, but it was one of those laughs you give when you are pretending to be cool with something that you definitely are not cool with. The intern was too young to pick up on the subtleties of my fake laugh—that’s why she was an intern. She was here learning basic life-work lessons like “Don’t make fun of a senior staffer’s age without getting said senior staffer to put, in writing, ‘I am cool with that.’ ”

The intern started calling me “Mom.”

“Hey, Mom!”

I let it continue for about two weeks. I tried to force myself not to mind. Sherri, you’re a comic, you can handle it. One day, I admitted to myself that I was not handling it. I pulled the intern aside.

“Listen, if you want to keep your job, this Mom stuff has got to stop. You can call me ‘Big Sis,’ you can call me ‘Auntie.’ But do not—do not—call me Mom.”

She stopped.

I agree that the intern had me on a technicality. I could have given birth when I was eighteen. And Lord knows, when I’m sixty, I’ll probably be flattered if a twenty-three-year-old calls me Mom. But not yet, thank you.

It’s depressing when young girls consider you a mother figure. I’m no longer competition. Young women don’t clutch their men when I walk by. Instead they offer their assistance. I was standing on the bus recently and a young woman stood up.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said. Ma’am? I was outraged. When did I go from miss to ma’am?

“Yes?” I said. Be polite, Sherri, I told myself, she probably recognizes you from The View.

“Would you like my seat?” she asked.

“No thank you!” I said. “I don’t need your damn seat! I can stand up!”

And as soon as she got off the bus, I plunked down in her seat. My ankles hurt.

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