Mug Shots

Scary stuff, Nation. The other day, we walked by a colleague's workspace. She wasn't there, but we saw on her desk a mug on which was printed "World's Greatest Mom." Wow. Who knew?

At first, we were upset, thinking MOS should have received the honor, but we reasoned that she probably just didn't know about the contest; after all, we didn't even know about it, and we're far more culturally in-tune than MOS. We figured we would just apologize to MOS for our failure to enter her into the competition.

But would MOS even have won? After all, our absent colleague obviously had some tremendous skills in the motherhood arena. She had always seemed mild-mannered to us, but away from work, at home, she must have mothered the holy hell out of her family. The contest officials obviously saw this. We resolved to come back and find out hr secrets as soon as we could.

But that night, things got freaky. We were watching TV--the show doesn't matter. What's significant is that, on this show, one of the female characters fixed herself a cup of coffee. And as she raised the mug to her lips, what did we see printed on the side? WORLD'S GREATEST MOM!

Obviously, the show was fictional, but the similarity of the character's mug to our colleague's was disconcerting. We had to investigate. We jumped in the car and sped to the nearest mug store. It being 2:30 in the morning, the place was closed, but we resolved to come back as soon as it was open. Later that morning, we called in sick to work, cancelled the appendectomy we had scheduled for later that day, and headed out to the store.

What we saw shattered us.

Nation, an entire section of a shelf was filled with about a dozen of these "World's Greatest Mom" mugs! The merchants weren't even trying to hide their skullduggery!

In short, and we hate to be the one to tell you this, if you have ever given or received a mug with "World's Greatest Mom" printed on it--and unless the recipient has actually participated in and won the Mother's Invitational Thunderdome Elimination Tournament held every two years in Calgary--you have been hoodwinked! Those "World's Greatest Mom" mugs are nothing but a cheap, transparent marketing ploy!

Sorry about that. We need a cup of coffee ourselves, now. . . Ah, "World's Greatest Blogger." Now you're talking.

(Image from Amazon.com)