Have I mentioned before that life is funny?  It bears mentioning again, because it is the only explanation I have for why my Mother’s Day included blood-curdling screams.

Like most of my adventures, this one started out innocently enough.  As I have mentioned 53 times already, I attended a writing conference a few weeks ago.  By chance, CBS Sunday Morning was also at the event, filming a segment for Mother’s Day about Erma and how her humor helped revolutionize the way America viewed the career of Motherhood.  Tracy Beckerman, humor columnist, blogger, conference speaker, and author of the book Rebel Without a Minivan, was on deck as a feature interview for the show.  Tracy is smart and funny, and she signed my copy of her book even though I do drive a minivan, and I once commented on her blog “Lost in Suburbia”, and we are friends on Facebook, so really I’m almost a real friend,  stalker,  quasi-acquaintance, so I tuned in to see her (and, truth be told) to try to catch a glimpse of my aforementioned disastrous haircut from behind, somewhere in the crowd.

The TV cameras were around every day, filming many, many hours of mingling attendees and numerous workshop sessions.  No biggie, until they popped up in a session where I stood up and shared some very personal information as part of writing exercise on our greatest fears and most embarrassing moments.*

*A lethal combination.

I felt rattled to have a camera in my face while speaking, but was reassured that with 350 attendees, many speakers and an estimated 147 hours of raw video footage, I need not give it another thought.

So, fast forward to 9:00 Mother’s Day morning, and I know the show is on but I have recorded it on the DVR so I would not interrupt the family making a fuss over me early on my day. Watching Tracy would be fun, but I knew the enthusiasm for showering me with gifts and cards would too soon come to an end, so I wanted to savor it.  Indeed, my guys gave me a wonderful day.

As the fawning masses were running out of steam later in the late afternoon, I settled in and cranked up the DVR.  The segment was a sweet piece about Erma and motherhood, with fun interviews of her kids.  It included cute little cross-stitch segment transitions of Erma quotes, such as “Insanity is hereditary — you get it from your kids.”  Fade that first cross-stitch, and there is my face.

I found this shocking.  I started screaming.  I don’t know why.  It was so not cool.  I bet Tracy did not scream at the TV.  I was on the screen for five seconds, and said one sentence.

The Little One came rushing up the basement stairs to see if I was being murdered — apparently seeing myself on TV when I don’t expect to see myself on TV makes me emit a blood-curdling type of scream.  We didn’t know that about me, but now we do, for future reference.

It is a good thing to know, because life is funny.