Mirror, Mirror, On the wall....

....I have become my mother after all.

It's official. I am now my own mother.

I have been doing mom-like things for a long time. My husband usually catches me and says, "Hey, Linda! Stop it!" (Linda is my mom's name. The man sure knows how to get my attention!)

Lately I have become even more mother-like. I have noticed that I have started to fling my arm out across the passenger seat when I have to brake suddenly. (I guess my arm is there in case the seatbelt AND the airbag fail to work? Who knows.)

I say things to my kids that my mother said to me when I was a kid. When I say these things, it eerily sounds like my mother's voice coming from my mouth.

Like the day I told my boys not to eat their boogers because it would make worms grow in their stomachs. Why the heck did I say that? That was one thing that freaked me out as a kid, yet I REPEATED IT to my kids. (They still pick their boogers and eat 'em, so I guess they don't care about worms.)

I've walked through piles of stuff in my kids' rooms and warned them that they need to keep the floors clean because in a fire I might trip over the piles of junk and not be able to save them from the burning house.

Yep. My mom told me that one, too. Strangely, for months afterward I had nightmares about the house burning down. Great parenting, I tell you.

The worst thing, though... the dreaded thing that has made me realize I have turned into my mother....

I'VE STARTED TO HUM.

Oh, woe is me. It's true.

My mom loves to hum along to songs. She doesn't sing along. She hums. It has irritated the snot out of me my entire life. So WHY am I now doing it?

I can tell you why. In my aging wisdom, I have discovered why my mother hums. And guess what?

IT IS ALL MY FAULT.

See, I like music. I LOVE to sing along to the radio, but I'll sing along to anything, really. TV commercials. Kids' videos. "The Little Mermaid" is my favorite movie to sing along to. I know all the words. Even the French song that the chef sings when the Sebastian the crab is about to get stuffed. Les Poissons. LOVE that song.

But, like Edith Bunker, I've been warned to stifle it. My daughter is evidently very sensitive to my singing, so much so that she barks at me whenever I sing along to something.

"MOMMMMMMMMEEEEEEE. PUH-LEASE stop singing."

Therefore, in place of singing, I've turned to humming.

Like my own daughter, I chastised my mom for singing. I have no idea why (other than she always tried to sing the harmony instead of the melody). But, I did it to her. And, so, there it is. That's why my mother hums. I stifled her. I told her to stop singing, so she did the only thing she could do. She started to HUM.

I made my mother a Hummer.

And it's come back to haunt me.