How Much Gratitude is Enough?

Ever have someone do something for you but you never hear the end of it? Ten years later and you're still being hounded over that favor or "kindness" that person did for you? Yep, I live with that pretty much every day of my life. My mother never allows me to forget a single thing she's ever done for me. I'll be 90 and she'll still be haunting me to the grave because I didn't show the proper amount of gratitude for an article of clothing she bought and me telling her the whole time "Don't buy me clothes; I don't buy things I can't try on first." She ignored me, bought me clothes last Christmas  and none of it fit. *sigh* I did tell her once that if she needed that much gratitude and so many accolades then maybe she should donate a wing to the hospital. They'd sure enough grovel for her. 

Seriously, though, how much gratitude is enough for one person? I've always heard that it's not really considered a good deed if you tell it or brag about it. It does sort of defeat the purpose. I hear the refrain "I was just trying to be kind" so often that it's lost any credibility it might've had. She doesn't do anything to be kind; she does it to incur a debt that she will collect on for all eternity. And if you refuse to repay this endless debt, she will remind you of every little thing she's done on your behalf since you were old enough to walk and talk. Dear God, spare me the guilt trips and manipulations! She sees herself as a martyr, sacrificing all she owns to do a "kindness" for people. Remember the clothes she was asked not buy? She buys what she wants us to have and then gets offended when I or my kids don't like what she's given us. Many, many times, she's refused to include the receipt so the item couldn't be returned (see above Christmas disaster) and in some cases, exchanged. I have clothes hanging in my office closet with the tags still attached because they don't fit or I hate them but I can't return or exchange them either. Oh yeah, she always asks to see whatever it is she's been so determined for me to have. One year, my mother asked my daughter what she wanted for Christmas. My daughter had her heart set on an IPod. It wasn't what my mother wanted her to have and went off on a ridiculous rant. When she paused for breath, I informed her that if she had no intention of buying the kid what she asked for then she should never have asked in the first place. It was wrong and she was wrong for doing it. We went round and round over it but eventually, right won out. My daughter was given a gift card for the purchase of the IPod. She tends to cave when it comes to the kids but that's where I get railroaded. She will completely ignore me and buy crap I don't want, like or need then call me ungrateful for not being appreciative or expressing the correct amount of gratitude for it. There are days when I wish I'd been raised by wolves.

Just last night she called me to do a search on The Bachelorette reality show and see who this girl Ali winds up with at the end. Confused by this request (I'd noticed earlier that the show was scheduled to air that night) I innocently asked,"Why don't you just watch the show?" I was instantly berated because I wouldn't do a simple search for her without "bitching" about it; especially when she'd given me her computer, after all. I swear to God, at that moment, I wanted to rip out the upgraded hard drive, the new motherboard/CPU combo, the Light Scribe Dual Layer DVD burner and the new, upgraded memory and give her back the original she gave to me because SHE never could learn how to use it! [Reader's Digest condensed version: I built it at her insistence; she'd never used a PC, only a LAN workstation and refused to read a book, take a class or have someone go to her house to teach her - all of which I offered to pay for - then got pissed at me because she didn't know how to use it]  Instead, I took a deep breath and did the search. Found some unsubstantiated rumors that this attention hound Ali (she's looking for love on a stupid reality show!) winds up alone. Me being me, I tsked and spread the rumor just a little bit further when I told my mother that Ali missed the Love Boat entirely and went home alone. Yes, I admit it; I got a certain amount of satisfaction from that, even if there was no truth to it. 

Some days, you have to take your victories where you find them - no matter how small or how petty they might be.