Columnist blames her behaviors on mother’s genetics

By Erin Ferrell, Columnist

It has been observed, quite frequently, that I may be somewhat boy crazy.

I’m not necessarily ashamed of this, but I do feel the need to offer a defense – I come by it naturally. Exhibit A: my mother.

My mom is a sweet lady. She doesn’t date much, but she certainly has an eye for the fellas. Long after pictures of kohl-smeared “emo-rock” heartthrobs had disappeared from my desktop, Paul Banks, Interpol lead singer, still smolders broodily from hers. Well, it goes back and forth. Sometimes her desktop picture is a puppy, sometimes it’s Paul Banks.

I had a brief phase, perhaps not brief enough, in which I practically wallpapered my room with the flimsy pages of such fine publications as Teen Beat, Tiger Bop and Whopsidoodle (I made the last one up. But it’s ridiculous enough to sound like a teen magazine, right?)  To my knowledge, Mom hasn’t done anything like this during the last 23 years, but for a time she had a small picture of Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan taped discreetly to the mirror of her dresser. The picture, printed from my mom’s printer, shows Keenan shirtless, with hair down to his waist. The hair completely obscures his face from view, however his wildly low-cut pants do nothing to obscure his cutlines or the upper portion of his pubic hair. Just to reiterate, this is my mother we’re talking about.

Our similarities in taste run to athletes as well. My living room is set up so that when my mom is watching television,  I can enter the room undetected. If you’re stealthy like I am, anyway. One time while my mother was watching an Oklahoma City Thunder game, I entered the room in such a manner to hear her unaware of my presence address Guard Eric Maynor “Ooo Eric, you are SO fine.”

Scandalized, I exclaimed “MOM! He is literally my age!” She protested that she didn’t know I was in the room, but based on some other choice comments she’s made about Thunder players, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference.  She’s apparently transferred her affection to Russell Westbrook. Minx.

So, as you see, I am obviously guiltless in the matter of boy craziness. It’s genetics.

This column initially was published in the March 2 issue of The Campus newspaper.