My mom’s Mr. Coffee coffee maker is from like, 1985.  Think Kenny Loggins and Ronald Reagan era.  I normally would love to support appliances made pre-China manufacturing except for the fact that the coffee maker at this point in its old and miserable life makes terrible coffee.  But because it is still “working” mom refuses to give it up.  My mother has a long history of this.  Her hand mixer that I had to suffer through last Christmas making cookies for co-workers is Vietnam War era.  It has a motor that can power a go-cart (which has probably contributed to its longevity) but is terribly bulky to use, really only operates on one speed even though it has options (super, duper fast) and comes in an unfortunate shade of olive green.

A couple of years ago I upgraded my own Mr. Coffee coffee maker to a grind and brew coffee maker by Cuisinart.  I put my old Mr. Coffee under the kitchen cabinet in my kitchen.  And even though I live a couple hundred miles away down in Austin (mom lives in the Dallas area) this really bugged her.  She kept asking about it for ALMOST 2 YEARS.  Would I bring up the coffee maker to her place?  You would think I would be jumping for joy at the prospect of her finally replacing her coffee maker but the truth is that I had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn’t do such a thing.  And sure enough after she kept pestering me every trip back home/up to DFW I finally caved and brought her my old coffee maker.  Where she then promptly went and…stuck it in her garage.  In the waaaaay back, near boxes.  Not even boxes that are seasonal that might even have a chance once a year to see the light of day—no, boxes that will never see anything for a long time.  I asked her about it, “Hey mom, don’t cha think you might want to switch out your coffee maker for the one I gave you from the current century?” But she would only bristle at this notion and brush me away.

A few years ago mom got a ‘new’ used car.  She parked it in the garage and when I came to visit she told me to go look in the garage at her new vehicle.  When I opened the door to the garage before I had a chance to take in the sights of the new car I was distracted by hundreds of water bottles lining the wall and floor of the garage.  Each bottle had been previously opened, was partially drank and came in a rainbow of different brands.  What the hell was this? My mother is a 6th grade teacher but she is an English teacher not a science teacher so I couldn’t figure out what she was doing.  I went back inside.  “Mom, what are all those various water bottles lining the inside floor of your garage for?”

Mom looked at me like I was weird for asking.  “Well” she huffed, “after school is out I go around the hallways and pick up all the partially used water bottles my wasteful 6th graders leave around and then I bring them home to use them to water my plants!!!”  But of course.

The other Sunday we were sitting on her couch flipping through circular ads for the week.  Mom stopped on the ad for Target.  They were having a sale on Keurig coffee makers.  This is the brand that you buy the special coffee for and it makes one cup at a time.  Mom paused and said “I might like to own one of these”.  “Oh yeah?” I say casually though inside my heart was beating a mile a minute in excitement at this very real prospect.  This seemed promising.  This might be something she might actually use maybe even just for a few times.  It might see the light of the kitchen.  It might be taken out of the box.  I have to use the word “might” several times as insurance against the odds stacked away from the favor of the Keurig usurping the Mr. Coffee.  On the one hand I found it hard to believe mom would actually pay over $100 for a coffee maker then I realized this was probably a hint at me to buy one for her for Christmas.  “Which model would you probably want?” I asked.  “Oh I don’t know” she said, “I like the one that has more features as that seems to make more sense”.  Of course!  This was the secret.  Buy her a top of the line coffee maker, pull out all the stops, make sure it screams luxury and ironically she will feel obligated to chuck away the decades old coffee machine that carries a simple acronym and show off her new coffee maker with the hard to spell name that comes complete with an internal hot water tank!!  Maybe a little confidence a la appliances is all that she needs.

Then my mind turned to her birthday gift I gave her earlier this month.  She has had to call U-Verse out numerous times to fix issues with her TV in her bedroom.  Only the TV in her bedroom is giving her issues.  Finally on the 4th trip by U-Verse one of the repair men said helpfully, “Perhaps you should think of getting a new TV.  Since your TV is from the early 90s it just doesn’t have the best kind of connectors to work properly with the modern equipment we use”.  Mom’s TV is missing most of its buttons (she can only use it via remote control), one of them being my fault from when I was in 5th grade and pushed too hard and the button fell back inside the TV.  I’m 33 years old now.  Words couldn’t describe how excited I was that the U-Verse guy gave mom this ultimatum.  So a few weeks later on her birthday I present mom with a brand new, state of the art FLAT SCREEN HDTV to replace this ancient TV.  She looked at it like I was presenting her with a wrapped calf, complete with hair bow.  “It’s a new TV!!” I said excitedly just in case this wasn’t clear.  “To replace your old, half-broken TV so now your U-Verse can work like it is supposed to!!!!”

As of today it is still sitting unopened, in its box.