Yes, you read correctly. Your mother will headline this year’s Springfest.
Springfest is an incredibly important annual tradition on TU campus as the event is usually well-attended and well-received—and it’s the only time that students actually pay any attention to whatever Student Association does. Feeling the pressure for this year’s festival, SA tirelessly deliberated and desperately searched for the perfect budget-saving headliner, and they finally landed on a relatively indie artist to feature: your mom.
Well, your mom reacted with extreme enthusiasm when SA contacted her and offered her the stage. Her price? A glass of “good wine.”
“Just one glass,” she joked, eyes as sparkling as ever, “only one!”
But you and I both know she’ll have more than one glass. She will drink two and will be appropriately modest regarding her alcohol consumption. (When the clock strikes 8 p.m., she will yawn and say that wine makes her sleepy. We will sympathetically nod.)
Your mom will make a big spectacle out of the thing; she’ll call relatives you only see at funerals and ask you a bunch of inane questions about the campus that she has definitely been to before but refuses to remember. Should she bring a coat? Does Tulsa get cold? Oh, whatever, she’ll bring two in case it’s severely frigid or a mild breeze.
For dinner, SA will treat her to the best of their ability. However, she didn’t lobby for weeks to request a pizza beforehand, so she’ll have to make do with the most economic choices for the university. Looks like dinosaur chicken nuggets will be on the menu!
(“I remember when my child would eat those every day after I picked them up from elementary school,” she will tell me as she gingerly picks up a Triceratops nugget; I dimly note the exquisite selection. “They were always so…”
She trails off.
“So?” I finish.
“Oh, you don’t want to hear an old woman ramble,” she says.
“I don’t see an old woman,” I tell her, placing my hand on hers. “I see a woman. I see you.”
The way she blushes tells me it has been a long time since anyone has given your mother the romantic attention a blossomed flower like her deserves.)
In response to the Springfest announcement, students have been overwhelmingly positive. After all, your mom is pretty popular around these parts, and we’re all excited to hear her stylings for the night. First, she’ll begin with an impassioned criticism of the aesthetic choices in some interior design show on HGTV. Then, to the crowd of adoring fans, she’ll pull out the childhood photos, spending ample time showing the crowd your baby self’s naked body. She’ll top off the occasion with a daring one-sided conversation, maybe this time on Biden and gas prices or how a guy you went to high school with came out as gay. And the next morning, when she wakes in my dorm, she’ll wake up to breakfast in bed.
