Tiffany Yagitihoshima

Can it really be true that ALL mothers are over-reactors? It certainly seems that way. Mountains out of mole-hills and embarrassing sobbing over spilt milk, right? My own mother is a peculiar breed because she overreacts about many things she shouldn't (classically), but UNDERreacts about most of the things she SHOULD take seriously. I can tell her that I had a beer with dinner, and she calls her pastor to request prayer for me. But I can recount a terrifying experience of seeing a little child being mauled to death in the street by a pack of rabid wolverines, and she absent-mindedly asks if I've met any nice men lately.

For many years, Tiffany and I have exchanged stories of this sort about our mothers....often arguing over whose mother is, indeed, the crazier of the two. After all the heated competition, I think Tiff has finally taken home the championship trophy on this one. She's cleared a spot on her mantle in preparation. This little epidsode began several months ago about a week before Tiff's dad was due for surgery. Her mom, Carilon, made a trip to the hospital to donate blood..."just in case". As she was sitting there gettin stuck, her mind wandered back to a conversation she had with Tiffany...years ago...The last time Tiff donated blood, she happened to mention to her mother what her blood type was. For some reason Carilon remembered it, and asked the guy taking her blood if that sounded right to him. If she was (I don't recall any of the actual blood types from this story, so bear with me) one thing, and her husband was another, would it be possible for her daughter to be such and such? The guy laughed and said that the only way Tiffany could be her daughter was if she had been fathered by "the milk man".

So Carilon drives all the way home in hysterics over this conversation. Only one possibility seems logical to her; not that Tiffany could have misquoted her blood type; not that Carilon herself could have remembered it incorrectly; not that there could have been some type of mistake with the actual test results; but that Tiffany MUST have been switched at birth. Yes....that had to be it. What other options could there be???

Crying; snotty kleenex in hand, Carilon calls her best friend Gail. Gail rushes over, hears the dramatic tale as only Carilon could tell it, and joins the in the freak-out. Carilon cannot be soothed and cannot be convinced that Tiffany had not, indeed, been conceived in an Econo Lodge by a teenage Japanese American couple back in 1978 (Hall and Oates was softly playing in the background, no doubt). The two women drag out all the old family photo albums to scrutinize the differences between Tiffany and her siblings. This part is the funniest to me. Anyone who has met the Anderson family even once can attest to the fact that they all look JUST alike. However, Carilon and Gail agree that the disimilarities are obvious. Apparently, their plan of action wasn't extremely detailed, but they knew that, at all costs, they must keep the awful news not only from Tiffany, but from her father....so as not to upset him before his surgery.

Well, the whole family comes into town for the procedure the following week. While her father is in the operating room, Tiffany decides to go downstairs and give blood. Upon hearing this, Carilon approaches near panic. She fears that the horrible Anderson family secret is about to be revealed, and things will never be the same again. Tiff returns a few hours later and, under shaky breath, her mother casually asks if she found out what her bloodtype was. Of course, Tiff had remembered it incorrectly all those years ago. It seemed she was, very much, a product of her assumed mother and father. Carilon (again) bursts into tears and confesses her upset.

I almost wish the situation could have turned out the way Carilon feared it might. None of my friends have cool switched-at-birth stories. Another reason why I need new friends. When I was a kid, I used to tell people that my REAL parents were Tom Selleck and Shelley Long. (have I already told this story?) I don't know if I told people I had been switched, or given up for adoption. Either way, it sounded believable to me. But, then again, I also said that my great-grandfather was Mark Twain and that I had a boyfriend named Michael Landon. The point of this whole thing was to laugh at Tiffany....not to remind everyone what a messed up child I was. I suppose it's inevitable.