Keeping up with the holidays has never been easy. While mothers have classically taken on the brunt of the work when it comes to remembering and celebrating important dates, the age of social media has ushered in expectations beyond Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays.
One such victim of the times is Peggy Ranthom, who has found herself distraught after returning to Facebook after a day's hiatus to learn she'd missed the third National Sons Day of the year.
"Oh, gosh. I've really gone and done it now," said Ranthom, putting a palm to her forehead while seated at the kitchen table. "I just did this last month! Now the whole freakin' town is gonna think there's something wrong with me. I hope my boys haven't noticed — they'd be absolutely beside themselves!"
Unfortunately, the mother of two did not realize her college-aged sons have not noticed any Facebook posts at all since 2017, with their profiles now entirely consisting of photos Peggy herself had tagged them in.
"Shoot! Even freakin' Kari remembered to post! We get it, Kari, your kid got into medical school. How many National Sons Days are you going to keep bringing it up for? Bitch," muttered Ranthom under her breath.
After calming herself by harshly judging the color scheme of the heart emojis on the other mother's post, the Mount Horeb, Wisconsin resident got to work on her own.
"Do I acknowledge that I know I'm a bit late, or do I just shoot it out there and hope nobody notices? Aw crap, who am I kidding — I always notice," fessed the mother of one good guy and another who's sort of a douche. "I'm just going to briefly address the elephant in the room and get on with it."
After beginning the statement with "A little late on this, whoops!," Peggy got to work.
"Well, Josh seems to be doing well these days, but I don't want people to go from reading about that to reading about Michael and view him as the lesser kid," said the 55-year-old of her lesser kid. "Maybe I should just keep it vague and let people wonder — it's not like they're gonna ask about it at pickleball later."
Making a point to include how she's proud to see her kids "grow and learn as they go" as well as "handle everything life has thrown at them," the doting parent spent another 30 minutes on selecting the proper emojis. After choosing heart eyes, a kissy face, and a white heart, she sent it out to the wolves.
Staring at her phone for two little interrupted hours, Peggy's heart finally returned to a reasonable rate once the post was filled with an acceptable number of likes and comments from other moms mentioning how she "makes it look so easy."
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Photo courtesy of Nenad Stojkovic via CC BY 2.0
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