Mama On: The Care and Handling Of Bitches

"I didn't raise them. I raised you."

Bitches. Yeah, I used that word. Face it, they are a fact of life. You work with them, meet them in the mall, pass them on the highway, and generally just have to live around them -- fact and hazard of life in the 21st century.

If you were raised by a woman like my mother and as heavily indoctrinated in Mamaknology as I was, there is no way you could ever forget the Mamaknologist definition of a bitch: a malicious, unpleasant, selfish woman. There is also no way you could ever forget her take on living and working with the mean girls who grew up to be mean women.

My mother, the consumate Mamaknologist, believed that because we don't live in this world alone (and it's illegal to exterminate them), we are all going to encounter a bitch at some point. She also believed that no Mamaknologist worth her title had to surrender power, faith, intellect, or femininity to a bitch. Her ability to deal with these fatally self-imbued women bordered on legendary. Her tools for the task were simple: a stronger than average vocabulary, the courage of her convictions, and a straight backed determination to be herself -- you can do that when you know who you are.

I'm sure that it didn't hurt that she was tall and pretty (pretty, after all is as pretty does, to paraphrase Forest Gump). But, she had a point, and under her tutelage you learned to stand up for yourself without tearing others down -- leaving them with respect for you and your ideas. You learned the Mamaknology principle of grace under fire and applied it with a generous dollop of intellectual "smack" (as some of us enjoy calling attitude with street cred).

Best of all, you learn to celebrate yourself. Take a look in the mirror: we all have something (maybe only one thing) that we KNOW is exceptional. And it's cause for celebration. And finally, you hold your head up and walk like you know where you're going because you have a right to.

So take that, bitches.