OK, I admit it – I'm weird, but so is...

For years my mother introduced me as her weird daughter. I hated it. Then I believed it. People even provided me with proof from time to time. After my children repeated it, I thought, well, if people are still saying it, it must be true.

So I accepted it. I even bought a keychain that said, "I'm not weird; I'm gifted."

But I worried about being too weird, because if the saying is true that your children will marry somebody just like the parent of the opposite sex, my poor son was destined for a life filled with weirdness.

When I met Michelle, I thought, oh, thank God, she's normal. And then one day I caught her staring at my wall. Apparently, after having been told her new mother-in-law was weird (BY MY SON), she thought nothing of the odd looking wire-shaped man hanging on the wall next to my antique plates. 

OK, so maybe she's a little weird, I thought. Maybe my empty plate holder did look a little like the wire-shaped man she thought it was. I don't know, but just when I was getting comfortable thinking she might be only a tiny bit weird, she upped the weirdness factor when we sat together in a Mexican restaurant. 

I was so impressed when she started speaking Spanish, but ridiculously confused, because every time she spoke, her voice dropped about three octaves. "Wow!" I commented. "Did you know your voice becomes very masculine when you speak Spanish?"

Turns out she was learning how to speak Spanish by listening to a tape produced by a man, and when he asked her to repeat after him, she provoked some guttural sounds forth to speak just like him! We tend to laugh a lot about that (and so much more – I could go on and on, but this is, after all, just a blog – not a book).

So now, Michelle, I would like to say – with a voice much like the one that belongs to Brad Garrett, who was Robert Barone in Everybody Loves Raymond – Te amo, Michelle.