My (mental) giant.

And now, compare the story below, of Renee's 100-year-old, mentally alert grandmother, to THIS little gem.

I received a call from my mother (my 50-something-year-old mother) this afternoon. She was quite emotionally distressed. "I'm at the mall and I can't find my car," she said in her voicemail. "I've been walking around the parking lot for an hour. Call your sister and have her come get me." (Mom was at the Mall From Hell, otherwise known as the Grandville Mall, which is about 5 minutes from Katey's house but a good half hour from Holland.)

When she called back half an hour later, I still hadn't heard back from Katey and she was still wandering aimlessly around the parking lot. "I'll take a shower and come get you," I told her. "Thanks, " she answered, sniffling.

Mind you, this mall is so gigantically huge that it took us ANOTHER 30 minutes or so to find each other once I got there. "Oh, you're INSIDE the mall? I was on the OUTSIDE," she said during one payphone call.

My patience was already wearing thin as we got in the car and began slowly driving up and down every aisle, looking for her car. She claimed to know the general area she had parked in ("by Penney's and Chili's," she kept insisting, although my faith in her mental recollection was quickly fading). After almost an hour of driving around the parking lot, we were getting ready to call mall security and report it stolen (which would have been complicated by the fact that she didn't know her license plate number)...when we finally found it. It WAS in the area she had remembered...parked approximately 2.5 feet from the mall, in an aisle she had no doubt covered several times already. (It was an aisle the two of us had already driven down ourselves, actually, but I was too busy trying to navigate the Parking Lot of Death; HER job was to look for her car. Plus, I was looking further down the aisle, since she thought she had remembered having to park farther away. I didn't expect to find it practically valet-parked smack-dab in front of the mall, especially on this busy Saturday.)

Some of you will remember the OTown concert Katey, Mom and I went to a few years back (I'll pause as you laugh at us for going to an OTown concert in the first place). After the show, the three of us wandered the dark, deserted streets of Pontiac (one of Detroit's most dangerous suburbs, mind you--it's no Bloomfield Hills) looking for our car. We finally had to call the police....who drove us around for approximately 15 seconds before we found it in a parking lot RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. (Yes, I ended up in the back of a cop car with my mother and sister after an OTown concert....but really, who hasn't?)

So while Renee's grandma is out riding Harleys, my mom is aimlessly wandering around mall parking lots, swearing to herself like The Little Old Lady with Tourette's.

Hence my new nickname for her, revealed for the first time in the title of this post. I think it has quite a catchy ring to it, don't you?

(I'm sure MG will be along to comment on this post very shortly...if she can remember her Blogger password.)