I was never a cool kid. I was quiet and shrimpy – my first week of high school, the wrestling coach approached me in the hallway because they needed someone for the lowest weight class. I’d never met the man before this unwelcome encounter, which would be my closest brush with organized sports as a teenager, thank God. 

My mom was a cool mom (she had me young, raised me by herself). She never let on she realized how uncool I was. Just the opposite, she always pumped me up, acted enthralled by my run-of-the-mill opinions and ideas, cackled uncontrollably at my average jokes and impressions, jealous of my slightly above-average video game prowess. Et cetera.

This charade worked for quite a while, longer than it probably should have, until it all came crashing down, the wool pulled from my eyes in an instant like the moment Bruce Willis realizes he’s dead in The Sixth Sense (I think if I were better at metaphors it would make me a lot cooler). 

The moment was seventh grade, lunch break. I was eating my double-stack peanut butter sandwich and Ethan [surname redacted] said it looked gross. I responded that peanut butter makes you strong, and rolled up my sleeve to flex my bicep; the night prior, Mom had squeezed my arm and commented how chiseled I felt, that it must be all that peanut butter. Ethan [surname redacted] flicked my deflated ping-pong ball and the whole table erupted in laughter.

From then on, Mom and I were both keeping up a charade, her that she was impressed by my coolness, me that I believed her. It was a vicious cycle. We had gone through a similar song and dance many years ago, when Carey [surname redacted] had told me Santa Claus wasn’t real during recess in kindergarten, but I continued to act amazed each Christmas morning until my mom “told me the truth” several years later. 

And so the charade went, all through high school. I couldn’t bear to tell her I knew she was lying, and she couldn’t bear to let on that, really, I wasn’t all that great, at least not in the sense of what qualifies a teenager as “great.” (I do have admirable qualities, but the kind that I hope to be valued more as I age and my peers become more mature; I’m organized, loyal, I eat healthy, don’t like to drink or smoke). Sometimes I think Mom would catch on I wasn’t buying her schtick, say something along the lines of honey, what’s the matter? Or, don’t you believe me? Are people saying mean things at school again?

Finally, mercifully, the charade stopped (more or less) when I left for college this past fall. Once we no longer saw each other every day, there were fewer opportunities for her to be overly complimentary. When we did speak, I steered the conversation away when it began veering into “let’s brighten up Sammy’s mood by pumping him full of sunshine” territory. 

Also, I thought, maybe Mom had just decided I was too old for undeserved praise. It was time for me to be a man, to stand on my own two feet.

Then I got a text from her, a mint link to a POAP. Mom was the one that helped me set up my first wallet and ENS name, pbsammy.eth (like I said, cool mom). We’d never minted POAPs but I guess empty nest syndrome was making her nostalgic, or worried we might lose our memories to the recesses of our mind. 

Because this first POAP was not about life currently. It was a POAP from something we did in the past. And Mom started minting them like they were going out of style, or like she knew an airdrop was imminent. 

This POAP commemorates an A+ on a fantastic Spanish presentation (thanks to Mom for watching so many rehearsals!).

This POAP commemorates an epic, private La La Land dance competition in the living room (well, we posted it on Instagram but probably nobody watched!). 

This POAP commemorates some absolutely epic Christmas cookies, where someone took the lead for the first time (Mom still made her fam0us frosting!). 

They all followed that same format, with an enthusiastic parenthetical interjection at the end. Maybe she felt obligated to make it clear to the POAP Curation Body that these were, in fact, shared memories, and not just a mom creating POAPs as gold stars for things her loser son had done alone. 

Maybe you used to get a note from your mom or dad in your sack lunch. A bit embarrassing, but you could discreetly crumple it up before anyone noticed. Minting these POAPs would be like stapling that sack lunch letter to my forehead, forever. Look, everyone, my mama loves me! Don’t you too?

I started questioning just how cool Mom could be, if she didn’t realize how uncool it was to have a POAP collection full of “recall this time with Mom” POAPs. 

She asked why I wasn’t minting them to the wallet with my ENS name. I told her that, for security and privacy purposes, I had created a separate wallet for my “personal” POAPs and my primary ENS would be for “professional/Web3 reputation” POAPs. This wasn’t completely untrue, it’s just I started this practice in reaction to her POAPs, not prior. She didn’t question me further, but also she didn’t write back. She always replies with at least a “like” reaction, usually way too quickly. 

So now I think I’ve upset her – and we never fight. But, like, doesn’t she have anything better to do with her free time? Perhaps I’ve been blinded by love the past 18 years to see the true person, that, really, she isn’t all that cool either. I am my mother’s son, after all. 

Or, more likely, perhaps she was cool and giving birth to me robbed her of youth, of friends, and now she has forgotten how to have a life, how to be cool (she certainly couldn’t learn that from me!). My therapist says I have a tendency to blame myself for things but in this case I think I’m right. Also I have tried to dive into the subject further with my therapist on multiple occasions but once he learned POAPs are “NFTs” all he wants to do is warn me about the dangers of crypto and then ask if I know of anything that might moon, am I using that term correctly? 

What’s the point of preserving memories when we’re all going to be dead in 100 years and can’t remember anything, what’s the point of anything at all anyway.