Moms & Money Belts

Ever since I can remember, my mom’s been warning me about being sold into the sex slave market. It was just everyday conversation at our breakfast table—mom’s version of a pep talk.

“Bad men will pay top dollar for two cute blonde girls,” mom would say, “Now, do you want your eggs scrambled or dippy?”

It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized mom may have been overstating things a bit. I also discovered that ‘dippy’ was not the official egg terminology... 

...it was ‘over-easy.’ That was an embarrassing brunch with girlfriends at the Omelette Parlor, but a liberating awareness about my mother’s worrying. I decided that life would be much simpler if I avoided topics mom considered dangerous, which included:

Buying a new car; buying a used car; leasing a car; putting too much money down; putting zero down; letting a health issue go untreated; taking over-the-counter medication; taking prescription medication; riding on a motorcycle; riding on an ATV; riding on anything with less than four wheels; going anywhere alone at night; going anywhere alone, period.

That said, after I told mom I was going on vacation to Paris for a week… alone…I anxiously awaited her reaction.

“Melanie! You CAN NOT go alone. Someone will follow you home, strangle you and have sex with your corpse.”

“Mom! Gross!”

“Melanie, You MUST travel with someone.”

“Well, I’m not, so you’ll have to just get used to the idea.”

After a long uncomfortable silence, during which I could feel heat smoldering through Mom’s multi-patterned Chico’s top, she continued.

“Well, do even you have a money belt?”

“No. I’m planning to bring my brown leather saddlebag.”

“Melanie! A bag can be CUT OFF by professional thieves!”

“Okay, okay, Mom, I got it.”

But she carried on anyway. I tuned out, and when I keyed back in twenty minutes later, she had shifted the topic of her travel safety lecture from pickpockets and muggers, back to kidnappers and murders:

“Now this might sound a little paranoid,” she prefaced unnecessarily, “but, when you email us about your safety each night,”-- wait, when did I agree to this? “could you always include a ‘code word’ that we both know ahead of time? Just so I know that it is really you and not a kidnapper using your laptop.”

Gosh, you get kidnapped once and your parents never forget it.

Ever since my brief ATM abduction in 2007, the phrase—Don’t worry, Mom—hasn’t meant much. The tables had turned. I no longer felt entitled to disobey Mommy. Instead, at thirty-two, I was actually considering listening to my mother for the first time in my life.

Could she be right? Boy, was she was spot-on about going to ATMs at night!

I recognized that it was pretty gutsy to travel abroad, alone, just a year after being held up at knifepoint for twenty terrifying minutes. But I was only going to Paris, France—not Fallujah; it’s probably more dangerous going to Disney World. In an attempt to ease Mom’s fear and my PTSD, I decided to bring in the big guns. I emailed the district attorney who had worked on my case. Deputy Chris Baker and I had become friends during the trial. He responded quickly to my email inquiry:

“Tell your mom I have never heard of anyone being kidnapped twice. At this point, you could go to Columbia with a t-shirt saying: My Dad is Bill Gates, and no one would touch you.”

His blessing was the reassurance I was looking for. Mom, however, still wasn’t convinced; she knew better than he, a D.A. in the homicide division.

It wasn’t that my mom didn’t want me to travel. Just the opposite, actually. Her greatest love in life, besides spreading cheese on crackers, is traveling. She and my dad have worn many money belts, all over the world, well besides the ‘scary places.’ I can’t keep track of all of the places she’s referring to, as her list is quite extensive and slightly racist, but off the top of my head, here are a few warnings I remember receiving:

Turkey—Don’t go there, men will treat you like they do their 
goat.

South Africa—Don’t go there, monkeys will come into your tent 
at night. 

Africa—Don’t go there, you’ll get cholera and you’ll writhe and sweat into a feverish encephalitic coma.

Thailand: Don’t go there, they have tsunamis. But if you go, stay on a high floor in the hotel and check for trees you can clutch on to. But whatever you do, DO NOT ride an elephant—it might go "rogue" because it’s sick of being tethered to the ground with a spike.  

China—Don’t go there, you’ll get thrown in jail for spitting your gum out and will receive 1,000 lashes on your back with some bamboo thing.

Bali—Don’t go there, there’s one woman to every 20 men; lots of potential for things like gang rapes or Natalie Holloway disappearances.

Columbia—Don’t go there, you'll be forced to be a ‘drug mule’ and shove balloons that could explode ‘up you’.

Laos—Come on, Melanie, just kill me now and get it over with.

So, it wasn’t that she wanted me to just stay home and pop out a bunch of kids (well, she did want that too); it was just that she wanted me to travel to ‘un-scary places’ and be escorted by a big strong man.

I did have a brawny boyfriend (now my husband), but it was important though that I go to Paris alone. Many months of therapy had gotten me to a good place with my trauma and this trip was to be the cornerstone in regaining my lost confidence. My boyfriend and my therapist were behind my solo trip 100%; Mom was against it 110%.

My mom never gave up on her anti-solo-trip crusade; it’s just not her style. I received terrifying emails about travel stories gone horribly wrong up until the day I left. I tried just deleting the emails immediately before they could infect my inbox and my PTSD head, but the subject lines alone got me gnawing my nails:

I finally had no other choice but to set a Gmail filter on my own mother:

All emails from: melaniesmom@yahoo.com

Skip Inbox

Send to the Folder titled: “Scary Emails from Mom” 

The night before I left for Paris, I made possibly the biggest mistake of my life: I checked the S.E.F.M. folder. Fifteen new emails!

I only opened the last two, which turned out to be two too many:

1. “If anything bad happens, just contact us and we will wire you money… although I have no idea how to do that.”

2. “One more thing. Be careful of little kids who might act cute, just so that their scary pimp can jump you.”

En route to Paris, I was completely paranoid and started acting like a lunatic. First, I told anyone within earshot at the Charles de Gaulle airport, a dramatic story (lie) about how I was meeting my husband there in Paris who, of course, had just finished a tour of duty in Iraq. Who would mess with a military wife? 

Then, I bitched out a rambunctious 10-year-old who accidentally bumped me—in a harsh tone I said, "If you don't respect my personal space, I’ll calle Policia." Tears welled up in the little boys eyes and he mumbled something in French to his pimp.

Or, I guess, it could have been his mom. I wasn’t taking any chances!

I continued to maneuver through Paris at this level of suspicion for the first forty-eight hours. Then, one person after another reminded me that I was in a city nicknamed ‘Gay Paree’—so named to convey the copiousness amounts of fun this marvelous City of Lights had to offer—and never had I been more uptight.

Just as I started to let my guard down a little and relax, my almighty American hair straightener exploded. I had an adaptor; actually I had three. Panicked, I considered running out and finding a French straightening iron, but in a moment of clarity, I remembered the real purpose of my trip…so I laid my heat resistant pad over my straightener, thanked it for its service, and finally surrendered. 

I threw caution to the wind, let my naturally curly locks loose, and abandoned myself to the limitless joy to be had in that magical city.

When I got back to my hotel room that evening, I had a new email, this time from my dad: “Your mother is very worried. Have a super time, but stay off the news.”

I did both.