“We’re OK, Mama”
When I’ve had great banter with the server the whole night, and she comes up to us to ask if there’s anything else we need before she brings the check.
“OK, Mama!!!”
Giving praise to a friend for any minor accomplishment.
“Mama, are you OK?”
When my friend is going through a tough breakup, and he wants to dye his hair platinum blond and is now obsessed with catching the Knockdown Center Killer.
“OK, Mamá”
After my Venezuelan mother reminded me to text my aunt for her birthday.
“Mama…”
When my friend has been at this new job for only six months, and they tell me they want to quit without a backup plan.
“Oh, Mama!”
Johnny Bravo.
“Oh, Mama, we’re not doing that”
At a party after I get cornered by my friend’s friend from Florida who wants to talk at me about the success of the DeSantis administration.
“Mama, don’t”
Whenever Jeremy Allen White is going to engage in self-sabotaging behavior in any piece of film or TV he’s in.
“Mama, please”
When my boss is telling me we have to make the PowerPoint more digestible because the CEO of the company doesn’t understand the data.
“Oh no, you don’t, Miss Mama”
I’m babysitting, and my niece steals the remote from her younger brother because she wants to watch one of those weird YouTube videos where someone is just opening Kinder Surprise Eggs for an hour.
[Head tilted down] “Mama”
When my friend is about to text the guy that’s been ghosting her.
[Head titled up, eyes widened] “Mama”
When I’m bored at a party, and my friend takes out a joint.
[Blink, blink, blink] … … … “Mama”
Someone has just asked me to go to their improv show at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.
“Yes, Mama!”
When a guy who is flirting with me but I’m not interested in romantically asks me if I want to get coffee.
“Yes, Mamaaa!!!”
When a guy I am flirting with responds, “Let’s do it, diva,” when I ask him to get coffee, so I pretend I wasn’t asking him out on a date.
“Not the place, Mama.”
Waiting in line to get bagels, and my friend has just started going into graphic detail about his sex life, and I’m sex-positive and want to celebrate anyone comfortable in their own body, but I’m hungry, and perhaps there’s an internalized homophobia that I haven’t fully examined in therapy yet, so I feel embarrassed, and while I do consider that probably nobody is listening to our conversation, I cannot fight the urge to shut it down.
“Oh, it’s tough out there, Mama.”
When my friend quit their job without a backup plan gets rejected from their fiftieth job application.
“Mama?”
Hiking with my lesbian friend, and she is much further ahead, and I am now alone in the woods.
“Go off, Mama!”
We got a flat tire, and I want to call AAA, but my lesbian friend says she can change it herself.
“That’s what you get, Mama.”
When my girlfriend has an ugly bridesmaid dress that she doesn’t want to wear after I warned her that being a bridesmaid was a bad idea.