In early 1989 when I was 12 my sister Sherry and I were patiently waiting for the music video premiere of Def Leppard’s Rocket on MTV. At the time Def Leppard was my favorite band, and Rocket was one of my favorite songs from their album. The excitement of the day got a little too much for us at one point, and while rough housing in the living room we spilled a glass of tropical punch kool-aid all over the carpet.

Now if you knew my mom you would know that this was not going to be pretty. You see my mom likes to keep her house looking like a museum, and like in a museum, don’t mess with her shit. Seriously though, you have no idea how pissed my mom got when we spilled shit. To this day she has mini carpet cleaners on the first and second floor of her house just in case.

As my sister distracted my mom, I ran into the kitchen to get napkins to soak up the kool-aid. When I was done soaking up all I could from the carpet, I ran to the backyard and threw the kool-aid soaked napkins into the ditch behind my house. As I am about to re-enter the house I can hear my mom yelling… “You god damn kids will be the death of me yet”. Apparently in my rush to throw the napkins in the ditch I dropped one in the hallway which my mom found. So we had to tell her we spilled the kool-aid, and we were sent to our rooms banished from watching TV.

Nothing was going to stop me from watching the premiere of Def Leppards new video though. Two minutes before it was supposed to premiere I quietly sneaked back into the living room, and I turned on the TV with the volume down low. The video started, and I was so excited and happy I could barely stand it. One minute into the video however my mom caught me.

  • Mom: What are you doing?
  • Me: I…
  • Mom: I thought I told you to stay in your room (I start walking back to my room)
  • Mom (talking to herself): Well I never… These kids today don’t listen… coming out here watching TV when they knew they weren’t supposed to… If I did that when I was a kid my dad would have slapped me silly… spilling drinks… and then I have to clean up after them… they think I am some sort of maid…

Yea… my mom loved to talk to herself when she was mad at us. As I got back to my room my sister peeked out of her room, to ask me what happened. I turned around toward the hallway and yelled: “Mom is being a bitch”

My mom flew around the corner with crazy in her eyes… she grabbed me and dragged me to the bathroom. She told me to open my mouth and she forced a bar of Zest soap in it. When she pulled the bar out of my mouth, about a minute later, she made sure to scrap it across my teeth, so that soap shavings would stay in my mouth. Then I had to sit down and listen to a lecture on why I am not to use those kinds of words, and believe me… it was a long long lecture.

It took me all day to get the soap taste out of my mouth, but I’ll tell you what… I never called my mom a bitch after that. Well… not to her face anyways.

And that… is one of Nick’s Greatest Moments.