Have you heard the one about the dumb blonde? Have you ever met a dumb blonde? Now, what about the fakes? I mean peroxide hair girls and pretend airheads. Is the dumb blonde stereotype so powerful, some women find more advantage in acting stupid than impressing others with cleverness? Just how ridiculous does this get?

I'll tell you.

Far from a pretender, evolved beyond myth, my mother leads all blonde-kind. Her nails are bright red, and she pays weekly to keep them perfect. I could hire hookers for that kind of money, but not only is my mother economically vapid, she has a peculiar attitude about sex.

She never complained when my father would grab her and fondle her tits or split her thighs with a crude paw. I'd catch sight of this in the living room occasionally, but I'm sure it happened more often out of my sight. He was a walking hard on. The cops imprisoned my father for raping homeless women, and he committed suicide there, (because none of the other prisoners would molest him). Mom tolerated his obsessive and criminal libido, but she tells a whole other story if I confess to pinching a girl's behind at school. My hands are still imprinted with backward inch marks.

Mother observes all the requisite behaviors of a classic D.B. She smiles blankly at conversations above a third grade level, waits until her panties turn yellow for gentlemen to open the ladies room door, and obsesses over clothes like they would reduce nuclear stockpiles, make nicotine harmless, and cure religion.

She bought a lime green sports car with Dad's life insurance but had to sell the house to pay off a few months of utility bills. My mother said we were lucky to be able to drive such a nice car while apartment hunting. (at 85 miles per hour!) She signed the first lease presented. We moved into a rejected sardine can four blocks away from the nine room, half acre home we once owned.

If I had known how dangerous she was with a checkbook, I would have stolen it. All of our money troubles could have been solved in a single stroke. Mother wrote checks like a high financier, but she had trouble stuffing them into condom vending machines. Cash was a foreign concept. Without her checkbook, she'd be forced into begging for blank checks on street corners. I did steal it eventually, but I should have the instant I was able to forge her signature (half an 'X').

It happened the day I realized that my mother was actually a highly intelligent woman. We were eating lunch on a Sunday afternoon. I stared at my mom's tits, like I usually did. She might not be a model, but she's got the pose down perfect, 'did I leave my panties on the couch again?', with a tilted smile.

I know. I know. Real children don't sexualize their parents. I'm not going to pretend understand it either, but her tits stared back! I swear. No matter where I was in a room, they followed me. Who wouldn't be suspicious? Sex and my mother were like cars for geese. She didn't know what sex was, where it came from, or that it was in anyway related to her body. Sex was a sin, end of conversation.

Orgasms were a very different fish. I'd hear her screaming every other day or night, projecting all the usual uppercase, extended vowels, regardless if she were alone or with some guy who had talked his way upstairs into her bedroom. (I slept in the living room.) If a man could speak an intelligible sentence she'd spread her legs, which is not as welcoming as it sounds. It kept away a lot of drunks. My mom is more innocent than angels and more fucked than Satan's bride.

Yes, yes, I digress and digress again. Get use to it. For such a dumb person, mom is amazingly complex. I didn't realize her true intelligence, though, until she told me one thing on that dull, Sunday afternoon.

"Charlie, you must think your mother is the dumbest girl in the world." She said, speaking in her usual half giggle. Her eyes looked at me like they had been injected with Dr. Mengele blue.

"What a dumb thing to say." I told her. I love my mom. She fed me and kept me warm and dry, and she hugged me and cared enough to whup me when I was a brat. But I was growing up, and I began to understand why I got special attention from my teachers, at least the ones who had met mom.

"Oh, you simply won't believe what happened today."

No, I never disbelieved her. She was incapable of lying, regardless of how farfetched a situation sounded.

"I got married."

"Oh."

"He's a real, nice man."

"Really?"

"Yes, in fact you've even met him."

"That guy." Nodding as if laughing chipmunks cavorted upon the table lighting firecrackers stuffed up each other's butts.

"You know, Mr. Tiggs."

"WHAT! You married the apartment manager?" I jumped up.