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Yesterday was mother-son bonding day in the Kramer New York household.  We did a family favorite — we went to Macy’s One Day Sale with a 25% off coupon we received in the mail.  I convinced my mother that her coat was getting old, and I helped her pick out a nicer one.  The big drama began when the cost of the coat turned out to be $99.65 and the salesman wouldn’t use our coupon because he said the purchase had to be $100.  Talk about hard-asses!  Is this the same company that puts on the playful Thanksgiving Day Parade?  But my mother would not relent.  We searched for the cheapest thing you could buy in Macy’s, so we could stick it to them and still get our discount.  We ended up buying a $1.25 bottle of Macy’s “Spring Water.”  Where the hell is this spring — under Herald Square?

On the way home, we stopped in downtown Flushing, which is more of a real Chinatown than the Chinatown in Manhattan.  I took my mother to have her first dim sum.  If you have never been to this type of Chinese restaurant, dim sim is usually served in a large banquet hall.  Rather than ordering from a menu, women push these carts with different types of appetizers.  If you are kosher, forget about it!  Most of the dishes are either pork or shrimp.  You get charged a modest amount for each plate.  These restaurants get jammed on weekends, so we had to share a large banquet table with a family that didn’t speak English.  My mother was a little nervous because she was unfamiliar with all of the dishes.  I tried to act confident, but the truth was I had no idea what half of the dishes were myself.  I avoided ordering anything that looked like fish eyeballs. 

Last night, I slept on the living room couch.  This morning, I woke up and noticed that my legs were all scratched and cut, almost as if my legs were in a knife fight. 

“What in the world happened to me?” I asked my mother as she was cooking some oatmeal.

My mother is a big fan of detective shows like CSI and The Closer, so we both sat down to examine the evidence.

1)  Our first thought was that it was a reaction to the dim sum, but it seemed unlikely that this would only affect my legs.

2)  We discussed “bed bugs” in the couch, but there were no visible bites, only scratches.

3)  Despite watching “The Polar Express” last night, where the moral of the story is “believe,” we do not believe in ghosts wanting to do harm to my legs for some evil reason.

4)  My mother insisted that she doesn’t sleepwalk.  And if she did sleepwalk and come over to me with scissors in hand, she wouldn’t cut my legs.  “I would probably cut your hair.  It looks awful.” she said.

5)  Finally, our TV detective method paid off.  When I used to be in bed with Sophia, I would always wrap my legs around her legs while I was sleeping.  Being a creature of habit, I was wrapping my legs around the abrasive pillows of the couch, and every time I moved, I would scratch and cut my legs against the pillows’ zippers without even waking up!

Love hurts.