Why the title of this blog is "When the Ring Swings Forward..."

First off, while I am a big reader of fiction, I'm not a huge fan of "The Lord of the Rings" novels. 

My mother read us "The Hobbit" over the course of many dinners.  It was one of her favorites.  I preferred "The Curious Lobster" (also a dinner-time read). (One of the gifts from my mother I do truly value is her sharing her love of reading with me.)

Tried to read them again in my teens, at the behest of my first serious boyfriend.  While the phrase "What's it got in its pocketsessssss?" became quite memorable ;>, nothing else stuck. 

Tried to read them again before the first movie came out.  Still too many names too hard to pronounce and too much alike.

So, it was with a certain...lack of enthusiasm that I went along with my hard-core Tolkien fan friends to see The Fellowship of the Ring. 

And while it was a pretty movie, that lack of enthusiasm continued until 1:34:26 in to the movie, at which point I sat bolt upright, and said, "Oh my god, that's my mother!"

What everyone else sees when they look at my NM

What I get when I try to enforce a reasonable boundary

What I found interesting when I went back to the movie to pick up the stills for this post, was that it wasn't actually when the ring was swinging forward that Bilbo went bananas.  It was when Frodo became uncomfortable with Bilbo's initial avid greed for the ring, and he went to put it away...

Hmmnn....


Two things strike me about this scene:

1. The point at which narcissists are most likely to unleash the thermonuclear armageddon of narcissistic rage, is when you are taking their narcissistic supply away.
2. I hadn't remembered that Bilbo actually apologized to Frodo  right after this occurred -- a real apology, not a "I'm sorry you felt hurt by that" dodgeball apology.

This kind of hit and run has long been one of my mother's specialties. 

When I was ten, I went to a sleepaway riding camp.  I was the youngest camper.  I had to share a pony with a rather nasty girl, whose equally nasty sister was also attending the camp.  We were supposed to share the work of taking care of the pony, mucking out his stall, etc.  Unfortunately, I ended up doing most of the work, and they stole my prized riding crop.  When I complained about this to the counselors, the two sisters started bullying me. 

One of the things they did was to sneak into my room late one night, cover my face with shaving cream, and write a really nasty note on my pillowcase with eyeliner, saying that I was a liar and a lazy bitch, and that I was the one who wasn't doing the work, not the nasty sister.

Eyeliner makes a permanent stain.

I didn't have the sense to throw the pillowcase out before I had to go home.

My mother saw it.

A couple of weeks later, I forgot to take the folded towels on the loveseat in the front hall upstairs with me. 

Multiple choice question:  Was my mother's reaction:

A.  To say, "Hey, you forgot the towels.  Please come down and get them."

or

B.  To scream at me, "You're so lazy!!! I told you to take those towels upstairs!!! Everything those girls wrote on your pillowcase was right!!! You're lazy and you're never going to amount to anything!"

If you're a fellow ACON, I'll bet you knew which option to choose...

This is far from the only time something like this happened.

I never knew exactly when it would happen, or what would trigger it.

She never apologized for this.

Ever.