April Fools but You Can’t Fool Mama

By Jean Caligiuri McKenna

“You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” 

Abraham Lincoln

In our kitchen when I was growing up on old Beach 84th street, (where Dayton Towers now stands), my mother always kept a coffee change cup on the cupboard shelf. Placed upside down atop a porcelain saucer, it housed an ivory home for leftover nickels and dimes generally saved for rainy days. Like the Tide soapbox sitting above the sink, it was part of the daily décor of the room.

One humid and sunny Rockaway day when no one was around, I suddenly got the spontaneous notion to “borrow” a nickel from Mama’s change cup to buy an ice cream from the Good Humor truck. Normally I would never take without permission, but it was too hot a day not to be tempted by a deliciously cold Good Humor pop. For reasons a 10-year-old’s sweet tooth could only explain, I followed that up with six more trips to the change cup that afternoon, thinking Mama wouldn’t notice the miscellaneous change missing. I’m sure the Good Humor Man didn’t mind though! My mother soon came home and discovered the absence of a whopping 35 cents, asking me “Jeannie, where did the money go?” The best I could manage was a guilt ridden but steadfast “I dunno.” I knew that she knew, but continuing to play dumb, (“I didn’t take it”), was the only way to spare myself any open embarrassment. Instead of arguing with me, she simply shrugged her shoulders and pointedly said, “If you didn’t take it, then who did?” And that was all! Though I felt ashamed and didn’t borrow from Mama’s cup without permission after that, her letting me off the hook relieved but also gave me the notion that using foolhardy excuses could wiggle me out of similar tight spots in the future.

My dear mother was an Italian immigrant homemaker whose leisure time largely consisted of cooking, cleaning, and trips to the A&P on Beach 88th Street. As a first-generation American kid who was “in the know” on everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to Hollywood movie stars and comic magazines, I thought, like all adolescents, that I was more knowledgeable and savvier than my mother with certain matters. In truth, I probably underrated her.

Time passed and at around 17, my high school girlfriends and I were brimming with the confidence and enthusiasm mirroring the early 1950s.       Every Monday night after our weekly Novena services across the street in St. Rose of Lima church, four or five of us would gather in my living room to chat and discuss various topics of life and society, similar to the currently in-vogue insight news programs on television at the time. Along with quiz shows, these cutting-edge academic programs featured respected commentators and in-the-know reporters about town, like Edward Murrow and Dorothy Kilgallen. Emulating their formats, I liked to host the living room sessions with my pals as if leading a psychology group panel on how to solve social issues, always beginning with “Tonight, let’s talk about….”

Especially appealing to us about these TV programs were the way the well-mannered articulate scholars usually engaged in discussions while holding slim cigarettes. The thinly whirling smoky atmosphere seemed to give smoking an air of intellectual elegance. What’s more, colorful cigarette ads of the time for Chesterfield and Camels featuring popular movie stars like Lana Turner, Janet Leigh, and Virginia Mayo added a sophisticated chic and glamour to smoking.

Since smoking seemed so adult and avant-garde, my girlfriends and I thought it only proper to join the ranks of the worldly smart set by smoking too.

Of course, we couldn’t smoke in the open since it was taboo for teenagers to smoke then. So, the bunch of us eagerly rushed into my upstairs bathroom for a hurried trial and clumsily began to puff. I don’t even think we were inhaling. Concerned about Mama smelling the aroma, we hastily fanned the smoke out of the open window in a comical frenzy. When Mama said she smelled cigarettes, I quickly dispelled any notion she had with a flimsy excuse. Now that we got away with the first attempt, my friends and I would take to smoking the next week in my bedroom. How fearless and daring! Thanks to our chic sophistication, however, one of the lit cigarette ashes fell on my thin bed blanket and burnt a hole right through.

“Never fear!” I thought. Using scissors, I confidently cut around the stain to look like a perfectly circled ordinary hole. Proud of my quick fix, I thought that should be enough to divert any suspicion from my mom. The next day my mother saw the breach when she was making my bed and questioned me about it. Beaming with cleverness, I rationally explained, “I stuck my toe in the blanket, and it went right through and made a big hole.” Before I could congratulate myself for my witty explanation, Mama’s next words upended my genius.

“It wasn’t your toe, I know you were smoking”…what you think, I’m stupid?”  As I feebly attempted to continue my defense, she threw in, for good measure; “You have to get up early in the morning to fool me!” I reluctantly waved the white flag in surrender. I guess I did underestimate her. Not only did my blanket ruse fail miserably, but she correctly suspected my smoking folly too! It then dawned on me that she probably was onto me all along dating way back to the change cup caper… and finally let me know it.

We spend much of our youth thinking we know better than our parents and that we can fool them anytime. Then we grow up and wonder how they got so smart, before realizing how smart we aren’t.

Mom is our first teacher, after all, imparting on us lasting wisdom dressed in humor, love, compassion and common sense. We should all be wise to always remain her willing student no matter how old we become.

In the ensuing years after my smoking episode with Mama, I became an ardent believer and humbled disciple of President Lincoln’s mantra, but with a proper twist, that “You Can Fool All People Some of the Time and Some People All the Time…but You Can’t Fool Mom!”