big time executive

A reality that I think everyone has to face is the fact that they’re never going to be considered an adult in their parents’ eyes. We could live to be 90 years old and as long as our parents are still kicking around, we will always be the child. In the seven years I have lived away from home and on my own, I have thought of myself as an independent adult more and more frequently. It’s a self-identity that I had almost taken for granted until I returned home this past weekend and came face-to-face with my mother.

I had convinced my manager to allow me to work remotely from my mother’s house on both Friday and Monday so that I could have a long weekend home. Each Monday at work my team, which consists of about 15 people, attends a team meeting to update each other on progress, issues, whatever. Since I was at home I dialed into the meeting and was placed on speaker phone while the rest of my team gathered in a conference room.

I had decided to use the house phone for the meeting in order to save minutes on my cell phone and warned my 13 year old sister to stay off the line. About 10 minutes before the end of the hour long meeting, my mother unexpectedly comes home early from work and decides to make a phone call. The following is what transpired:

Random team members: [insert business jargon here]

My mother: HELLLOOO???? [pause] HELLOOOOO??? [pause] HELLLOOOOO???

Meanwhile I’m bolting from room to room looking for the source of my mother’s call and eventually find her in her bedroom. Just as I’m running into the room, arms flailing to signal for her to stop, as if in slow motion she says:

My mother: HANNA GET OFF THE PHONE!

Panicked with embarrassment, I immediately end the call both from my mother’s phone and the phone I was using.

Afterward the obvious question to my mother was, “Why would you pick up the phone, hear people talking and continue to say hello over and over?!”

My mother: I heard MEN’s voices on the line! I thought your sister was talking to MEN!

Me: How could you possibly mistake the voices of 50 year old men for 13 year old boys?!

My mother: Well you know kids these days. They go through puberty early and have those deep voices.

Me: Mom you are SO embarrassing!

My mother: Well excuse me big time executive. But we don’t make conference calls around here.

It only took 30 seconds on a conference call for my mother to remind me that I will never really be an adult in front of her; meanwhile, my mother’s legacy lives on at work, as she is suddenly the most popular person in the office without ever having set foot in it.