Dear Mom

My mother is spunky and smart and I love her very much. But she’s got this one trait that drives me crazy: she believes everything she sees on The History Channel.I visited her in Michigan a few weeks ago. One night at a local brewery, with my sister, Charlotte, and her boyfriend, Greg, in tow, Mom began telling us about why she believes humans came to earth from another planet. “Your evolution theories can’t explain the pyramids,” she said triumphantly.“How does that have anything to do with aliens?” I asked triumphantly.Charlotte, who goes out to eat with Mom much more often than I do, looked at Greg and smirked.“How else would the Egyptians have known how to build them?” Mom said.“And what evidence, exactly, do you have to support our alien origins?” I said.“Geometry!” she said.She then went on and on about latitudes and longitudes and the Maya and alien images in cave paintings. I understood little of what she said, but knew enough to proclaim, too loudly, “That’s such bullshit, Mom!”For the sake of continuing an otherwise pleasant meal, we dropped it. But I resolved to find out what nonsense she was talking about and eventually set her straight.So I found out. And it’s as crazy as I thought.Read more at...The Last Word on Nothing, September 2011.