Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter

(Herman's Hermits, 1965)

This Mrs. Brown didn't have a daughter, lovely or otherwise. She was one of my sociology professors in college. Nobody called her Dr. Brown. We called her Mama Brown. And not because she was the motherly type. It was because she was married to Papa Brown, the head of the sociology department. Of all my college professors, she was clearly the most unhinged. She was about five feet tall and four and a half feet wide. She had closely cropped gray hair and wore house dresses to class. You know, those kind your grandma wore: cotton, short sleeved, snap fronts and two huge pockets on either side. Every single day. Rain or shine. Sleet or snow. She also wore house slippers. With no hose. Are you beginning to get the picture? Quite pretty, eh?

Since I was a sociology major the first three years of college I saw a lot of Mama Brown. Her lectures were amazing. And not in the "Ohmigosh that's totally insanely interesting and I can't wait to use this knowledge in the real world" sense. This is what her lectures were like:
Imaginefourdaysofmoisturewhereyouwantitthemost.IntroducingnewKYBrandLiquibeads.Thefirstandonlyvaginalmoisturizerthat'sadiscreetandgentleinsert.Oneliquibeadsinsertdissolveswithinminutes,thengentlyreleasestolastuptofourdays.Useitregularlyandyouwon'teventhinkaboutbeingdry.

(I literally opened up my Health magazine and started typing. Stuff sounds kind of interesting . . . )

Yes, she read for solid freaking hour (an hour and a half on Tuesdays and Thursdays). She never looked up, never broke stride, never changed her inflection. She would be extremely inconvenienced if we asked her to repeat something. I bgn wrtng wtht vwls. Glad to see I can still do it. Oh, and she'd suck on hard candy the whole time, too.

Papa Brown died right before my senior year and Mama went bonkers. She grew her hair long and started wearing jeans and t-shirts. She also started holding class at her home, but by then I had switched majors and didn't have that enriching experience. Mama Brown didn't last much longer at the school. I think her brandishing a Bowie knife during one of her home schooling sessions might have had something to do with it.

Ron and I got a card from her for our wedding. She signed it "Mama and Papa Brown." Doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo.