Spin-Doctor

I have been ghost-writing my mother's speeches. These days my parents are in the speech giving business. In all fairness, mother does an initial draft herself. I have been re-drafting her speeches these days and mostly when I read her drafts, I'm helpless with laughter. Mom puts in instructions in parentheses and are mostly to this effect, "Put a nice quotation so that it looks as if I'm very scholarly" or "I have to go and make tea for those obnoxious people, so please complete this paragraph."

Mother is a long one-act comedy show. Her entire life is dedicated to proving how loving, large-hearted and gracious she is. In reality, she is funny, amusing, comical and very, very irreverent. On last count, she was pleased with the job I did and was mad at my brother because he refused to help her in bamboozling the world.