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When I was a young boy, my mom caught me drawing a picture of He-Man’s Castle Grayskull on the inner linings of the family couch. She pulled me aside, put her arm around me and lovingly whispered, “He-Man is fake, Paul. But I’m real, and I can crush your spine while you sleep. Think about that while you get mommy a whiskey and her gun.”

I learned a lesson that day. Not just because I was verbally disciplined, but also because my mother took the rifle I brought her and shot me in the leg. Even today, my slight limp serves as a daily reminder of who’s in charge.

My mother’s birthday is this week. I’m not sure of her exact age, but I think she’s somewhere in her nineties or early hundreds. She can’t get around like she used to, so she spends most of her day cleaning the rifle she still uses to wing people who displease her. Everyone from the mailman to Smuckers (her pet monkey) to her shemale yoga instructor has at least a few pieces of lead in their leg. Yet everyone still adores or politely fears my mother. She is the sweetest and most deadly woman we know.

One time she took me to a petting zoo. One of the goats refused to eat the food I offered it. My mother rounded up the goat’s parents and lit them on fire, making sure the goat watched as they melted. She then made an unattractive-looking hat out of the remains and forced the goat to wear it.

Another time, a kid who lived down the street ripped me off by trading me baseball cards with fake autographs on them. She called his mother and made him trade back all my original cards. A year later, when their family went on vacation, she happily offered to bring in their mail. When they returned, they found that she had pooped in every single envelope, ruining the contents forever.

Yet another time, we went to the mall to get Tommy Kramer’s autograph. The former Vikings quarterback showed up drunk, wearing a cutoff “Who farted?” t-shirt and rather provocative jean shorts. The autograph he signed for me was personalized with, “I love tits! You have big ears. best wishes, Tommy Kramer”. My mother politely thanked him for the autograph, walked out to the parking lot and smashed the windshield of his car with a tire iron. When he got the windshield fixed a day later, my mother drove to his house and smashed it again. She still continues to smash his new windshields today, 20 years later. She will not stop until he’s dead.

She’s also a very kind and affectionate person. She always gives an extra loaf of bread at Christmas to the butler at our house, in additional to the loaf of bread he normally earns each week as his salary. She’s also donated many powerful roosters to the local underground cockfighting league.

Robert Frost once wrote a poem about my mother. It was titled, “Boner Lunch”. I’d reprint it here, but the content is a bit too graphic and risque for this publication.

My mother was once a contestant on “The Price is Right”. She won a snowblower and free Arby’s roast beef sandwiches for life. However, these prizes were useless because we already had a snowblower and my mom has always received free Arby’s sandwiches because she’s naturally charming.

Perhaps the greatest thing about my mom is that I write fake, insulting and possibly litigious columns like this about her quite often and she has yet to disown me, as any sane mother would have done years ago. To be honest, if I ever have children who pull the nonsense I do, I’ll waterboard the hell out of them until they become too weak to annoy anyone.

I’m assuming my mom just rolls with it because she’s used to it. It’s probably hard to be surprised by anything when you have a kid who once almost lit an alleyway on fire and threw up on the floor during the Pledge of Allegiance in kindergarten. Still, it’s mighty nice of her to have not killed me by now. Especially after that time whereI posted a picture of her in hair rollers on the internet. I’m pretty sure she’s still pissed about that.

I supposed I should be fair and point out that she’s never actually shot me in the leg, participated in illegal cockfighting, or set a goat on fire. She also doesn’t drink whiskey. The stories about Tommy Kramer and pooping in people’s mail are true, though.

For Christmas, I’m going to buy her something really nice, like one of those mechanical chairs that help people get up the stairs, like that old lady had in the movie “Gremlins”. I may also draw her a picture of former Twins utility infielder Al Newman, because I know she finds him unnervingly hunky. Or perhaps I’ll just give her the greatest present of all: Not embarrassing her for an entire day.

No promises on that one.