Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 3, 1990                   TAG: 9004030007
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FORGET THIS `SENIOR MOM' BUSINESS

This is really a peachy gift idea. It is a book that tells this dear lady how to avoid falling down and hurting herself.

This book, offered by Senior Fitness Productions, is supposed to be for a new group of American citizens called "senior moms."

I do not know how "senior moms" might take to this title but if anybody ever refers to me as a "senior dad," somebody is going to get a shot right upside the head.

My mother liked for me to give her candy or flowers for Mother's Day and she was reduced to tears when, as a callow youth, I wrote her a pretty lousy poem.

I do not think she was a "senior mom" at the time. If she was, it would have escaped notice because nobody would have known what a "senior mom" was.

I know one thing. That woman loved candy and bad poetry written by little Junior Beagle, and I don't remember her falling down a whole lot.

But times have changed and I guess what you do when you give your mother this book is say something like:

"Here you are, senior mom. I didn't want to spend my money foolishly - for example on all that chocolate candy that always messes up your bridgework.

"I got you this nice book that will show you how to keep from faling down the steps and killing or maiming yourself.

"This will also save me a lot of trouble because I won't have to get off work to go to the emergency room once you learn how not to fall down and kill or maim yourself.

"I hope you will pay close attention and practice that snap roll you are supposed to do at the foot of the stairs."

And if your mom is worth her apple cobbler, she will reply:

"Knock off that senior mom stuff, you cretin, and thanks a lot for reminding me that I might fall down the steps and kill or maim myself. Your sister Eudora always said there was something funny about you and now I see she was right.

"So was your father. He always said he wished you had stayed in the Army."

I am, as all of you know, a fair person, and you can buy this book if you want to and you can call the woman who nourished you and set you on the right paths "senior mom."

If I were a mother and a kid of mine gave me such a book instead of a five-pound box of candy, I would try to be calm.

But any kid who does that to me had better have a pretty good snap roll when he or she gets thrown out of the house.