You sucks!

Even after living in the United States for the past thirty years, my mom still gets confused about the use of singular and plural verb agreements. Say for example, we're playing a card game and she beats me. My mom will clap her hands together, then point at me and say, "You sucks!"

The first time she said this, it was cute in an old Asian lady kind of way. The nine hundred and twenty-sixth time she said this, it was excruciatingly annoying.

"You sucks!"

"No, mom..." I said. "It's not you sucks. It's you suck."

My mom nodded her head in acknowledgment and made a mental note of it. But then a new problem arose a few weeks later when she was making fun of my dad's cooking. She said, "He can't cook. He suck."

"No, mom..." I said, slapping my forehead in frustration. "It's not he suck. It's he sucks."

She just stared at me in total bafflement, and at that point she didn't care anymore. From then on my mom threw grammar out the window and applied the plural "s" to everything, just so she wouldn't have to think so hard anymore.

My mom would say something like: "Todays at the grocery stores there is a sales on strawberries. 99 cents per pounds! So I buys another baskets for you and Lynns to eats. If it was too sours for you, dip the strawberries into a bowls of sugars."

Sadly, I'm not exaggerating one bit.

...

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. You know that tired cliche of the black NBA player who has a strong black mom whose tough love and gigantic Sunday dinners allowed him to make it through life? Of course you don't, you always change the channel whenever a big scary black guy is on TV. Anyway, you are the classic strong mother with all the big dinners and infinite love. And like all those NBA players seem to want to do for their own moms, I will also buy you a house on a hill one day.

Thanks for all the meals, they were delicious. Thanks for letting me get away with so much shit. Thanks for defending me. Thanks for working so hard so that Lynn and I could grow up with a comfortable life. Thanks for somehow always finding a reason to brag about me to your coworkers. Thanks for always demanding a hug from me whenever I come home. Thanks for being so beautiful and warm-hearted. And thanks for favoring me over Lynn.

I loves you.