From Salon:
Funny things happen when moms meet Gmail, not just because they get tripped up by technology (plenty do not) but because moms — in their earnestness, their frankness, their goofiness — are simply funny. Anyone looking for further evidence need only flip through “Love, Mom,” a collection of maternal missives to adult children that are as endearing and cringe-inducing and skewed as mothers themselves. Like this little gem: “My computer has software transmitted diseases (STDs) from all the software I had to download for a class… I hate computer STDs. ☹ “
Or this terse slapdown: “Michael, I think you do too many drugs and say too many disparaging things about women on your blog. Love, Mom. “
The book “Love, Mom” originated in a charming website called PostcardsFromYoMomma, started by Doree Shafrir and Jessica Grose after joking about their own maternal correspondence. What began as an experiment — asking friends to send in their own forehead-slapping letters from home — quickly ballooned. “There was no way we could've anticipated the absolute deluge of emails we started to get as soon as the site went up,” Shafrir and Grose write in the introduction to “Love, Mom.” Go figure: When it comes to mothers, people like to vent. But more than mere mockery, the letters are a tribute to the adorable and exasperating quirkiness that make moms, well, moms. As one classic exchange on the Postcards website puts it, “You were welcome to stay in my uterus for nine months, and then my house for 17 years. But I understand, a week at your apartment might be a bit … much.”
More here.