Now, my Mom is a very observant Catholic, but probably even for that, she scores pretty high on her opinions about the importance of chastity. Sex in a marriage is wonderful but sex before marriage was an abomination. And physical affection short of sex ahead of marriage is pretty suspect, too.
So it’s a wonder that MTV made its way into our house, but it did. To avoid a lecture, this required having your hand quick on the channel slider. Mom never objected to the music. For her Catholicism, I never got any of that Satanic panic nonsense. But the “raunchy” videos were something else.
So if Mom was lurking around the house, unless it was Phil Collins or something general G-rated, and you didn’t want to get a lecture about the appropriateness of Paulina Porizkova’s swim suit, you’d be ready to swap channels.
One time I was doing other stuff but had MTV on and up comes Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” – the later version so I guess this must have been when I was about 17 or so – and Mom comes into the TV room and sees Ms. Kitaen writhing on the hood of Dave Coverdale’s car.
And as Mom starts into her canned lecture, I say “Mom, that’s his wife.”
She sits there and steams. Looking back and forth between me and the TV.
“You should be so lucky.”
And walks out without another word.
