Mother knows best (seriously. she really does.)

I just can't let this pass without comment any longer. It is unnatural for one person to be right as frequently and reliably as my mother is. She's right about everything. Previously I believed that this was simply because she knows everything (and that is certainly a contributing factor), but that does not explain the alarming way in which she continues to be right about absolutely everything even when there is no reason that she should be able to be right.

Example: One time a friend of mine mentioned that she was having pain in her knees and hips, and my mother said, "Oh, you must be pronating", which is when your foot and ankle do a strange rolling-around thing that they aren't supposed to do. And this turned out to be quite right.

The thing is, she makes this pronouncements with absolute authority after having received only the tiniest bit of evidence. I will say to her, "Oh, look, Mumsy, there is a pink balloon in the sky", and she will say, "Oh, yes, must be from my friend Susan's wedding", and I will say, "Oh, is she getting married today, and are they using pink balloons?" and she will say, "Well, I don't know if they're getting married today, but when I last spoke to her six months ago she mentioned that she was engaged and wanted to have a summer wedding or maybe an autumn one." And then she will speak to Susan again and it will prove that indeed Susan did just get married and have pink balloons and although she made every effort to prevent them from escaping into the atmosphere and ultimately causing birds to choke to death, a single pink balloon escaped, and it was that balloon which we observed.

(There is no such person as Susan. This is a hypothetical (but not exaggerated!) situation.)

Or, or someone will tell her, "My daughter's being cranky," and my mother will explain that the daughter in question probably has obsessive-compulsive disorder. And then the other person will say, "Now that you mention it, she has been checking locks a lot and washing her hands compulsively and developing bizarre rituals and covering every surface in the house with powdered sugar." Even though there was no reason initially that my mother's mind should leap to OCD in the first place.

Or a puppy will come to our doorstep and begin drinking the cat's water, and we will come inside and say, "Hey, Mum, this puppy is drinking the cat's water," and my mother will look concerned and say, "That puppy must have diabetes", and we will say, "Piffle, that puppy is merely drinking water because it is a thousand degrees outside," and then we will take the puppy to the veterinarian, and the veterinarian will discover that the puppy does indeed have diabetes and requires extensive treatment that we cannot afford and must then be put down. Which I guess would be a bit of a hollow victory for my mother.

None of these examples, except the pronating one, ever actually happened. But they could have. And I included the one about the dying puppy so that my mother wouldn't go getting a big head now that the Internet knows how right she is all the time. Internet, this hypothetical puppy would have probably lived a while longer if my mother did not hypothetically diagnose its problem accurately, because it would probably just have carried on drinking the cat's water and peeing all over everything and not died that day. So.