A Mothers Day Horror Story

It’s May, and this weekend is Mother’s Day.

First of all, let me say that I love my mother.

Dearly.

I respect her.

I admire her strength, her integrity, and the way she managed to raise us kids with strong values and a spine of steel, even when we were, frankly, little monsters.

She cooked dinner every night, washed and ironed our clothes with precision, and - perhaps most impressively - kept our household functioning like a well-oiled machine.

She was our lighthouse.

That said...

I’m not proud to admit that when I think of May, my first thought isn’t always Mother’s Day.

In fact, when I go back to my childhood, what I remember most vividly about May isn’t brunch or carnations or sentimental cards.

It’s bikinis.

Glossy, sand-dusted, tastefully posed bikinis in tropical locations...

....that were found in the gloriously forbidden, almost mythical pages of the legendary Sports Illustrated Annual Swimsuit Issue....

It was a publication that, at thirteen, felt less like a magazine and more like a golden tablet smuggled down from Mount Olympus and handed directly to only a chosen, lucky few by Zeus himself

That, my friend, was the real holiday.

A time when teenage boys across America collectively lost their minds.

And in my case, it marked the culmination of a top secret deep covert operation I had launched the previous Christmas.

You see, I grew up in what I’d describe as a Category 5 conservative household.

Rock music was banned.

PG-13 movies were treated like radioactive waste.

If a film didn’t involve a talking animal and a moral lesson, we weren’t watching it.

And anything remotely sexual - low-cut tops, suggestive ads, even an unchaperoned episode of Three’s Company - was seen as a gateway to damnation.

Which is why my brother and I, desperate and under-stimulated, made do with what we had.

And what we had… was the Montgomery Ward catalog.

For those too young to remember, the Montgomery Ward catalog was a phone-book-sized thick slab of glossy pages that showed up in the mailbox a few times a year and allowed you to shop for absolutely anything - furniture, toys, tube socks - without ever having to leave your house.

It was like Amazon before the internet - and it was how Americans shopped from home.

When my brother and I were bored, we would flip through it's pages.

I’d usually start in the sports section looking at baseball bats, mitts and cleats...

....but somehow would always wind up in the women’s swimsuit section.

And not just the swimsuit section, though that was obviously the main attraction - we’d toggle back and forth between that and the women’s underwear pages, which, at thirteen, I regarded with the same reverence archaeologists reserve for ancient scrolls.

We'd scrutinize those pages like we were decoding military intelligence.

To be honest, it wasn’t really that arousing.

But it was close.

And for a kid living in religious lockdown in the 1980s, it was all we had and it was as close as we were going to get.

Remember, this was the 1980's.

There was no internet.

No Cinemax (not as if my parents would have had it if there was).

All we had was Jesus, Baseball, Atari, the Muppets, and middle-aged women modeling cotton briefs staring off into the distance like they were rethinking every life decision that brought them to page 42 of the Montgomery Ward Catalog.

But then I learned about the legendary, once-a-year, full-color Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

I don’t remember exactly who it was that told me - it was likely whispered in gym class like some sacred rite passed down to my friends from their older cousins.

But the idea that a sports magazine, a wholesome, Dad-approved publication, would once a year unleash an issue full of bikini-clad supermodels (sometimes even topless - allegedly) was enough to short-circuit male adolescent brains.

There was just one problem:

I had zero chance of ever getting my hands on it.

There was no scenario in which my mother would ever buy me that particular issue of Sports Illustrated Magazine.

I could have had better luck asking for a semi-automatic rifle for a Boy Scout project.

But then - I had an idea.

A amazingly brilliant, incredibly cunning, genius foolproof idea.

That Christmas - five months before the issue would drop - I asked my parents for a harmless subscription to Sports Illustrated Magazine.

Not Playboy.

Not Maxim.

Sports Illustrated.

You know, Baseball.

Football.

The Dodgers.

America.

And to seal the deal, I gave my mom what could only be described as a living-room TED Talk - minus the PowerPoint, because remember, this was in the 1980's.

I delivered an impassioned lecture on the legacy of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the cultural importance of the Dodger's star pitcher Fernando Valenzuela and the miracle of his unique 'Screwball' pitch, and why the Dodger's first baseman Steve Garvey was nicknamed “The Iron Man.”

And to my astonishment - it worked.

That Christmas, I GOT THE SUBSCRIPTION.

I couldn't believe it.

My plan had succeeded.

I was a damn genius.

A true mastermind.

A boy with a dream and a ticking clock.

All I had to do now was wait until May.

Those five months dragged on like a middle school band concert with no intermission.

But finally - finally - winter turned into spring and May came.

It was almost time.

I was almost there.

I could taste it.

I could see the Promised Land.

I knew the exact day and time it would arrive.

I had reverse-engineered the mail carrier’s route like a junior CIA analyst.

And when that day and time finally rolled around, I took post at the kitchen window waiting for him like a sniper on a mission.

I remember that particular day like it was yesterday...

It was pouring rain outside - like the sky knew how important this was and wanted to mess with me.

But I didn’t care.

Wild horses, natural disasters, or a house fire could’ve broken out and I still wouldn’t have budged.

I was getting that magazine.

I was ready.

I had butterflies in my stomach and my palms were sweaty.

My heart was racing, my hands were trembling, and I even felt a tad bit dizzy.

I kept scanning the street like a kid waiting for the ice cream truck - if the ice cream truck delivered smuggled softcore bikini magazines instead of Bomb Bomb Pops.

And then - I saw it.

The mail truck.

Creeping down the block.

Stopping at each house with glacial slowness.

What was he doing?

Why was he taking so long?

I imagined him inside his mail truck, windows fogged up, taking his sweet time flipping through the pages of MY magazine.

Probably gazing at the bikini clad images of Paulina Porizkova, Kathy Ireland, and Elle Macpherson like he was studying Renaissance Paintings and other Masterpieces of Fine Art.

Maybe even muttering, “Lucky kid,” under his breath as he thumbed through the pages.

But that was fine.

Let him look.

I didn’t even mind a fingerprint or two.

He could fog up the whole thing if he wanted.

Just as long as he delivered it into my mailbox and I got it into my grubby little hands, where it rightfully belonged.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he pulled up to our mailbox.

Time seemed to stand still.

I stood there in the window and watched with unblinking intensity as he opened the mail box's metal door and began to stuff a pile of mail inside -

And then - then - the unimaginable happened.

Through the window - out of nowhere - like a horror movie jump scare...

I saw my mother appear - emerging from behind the side of the house marching her way towards the mail box.

What in the...

Where did she just come from?

And what was she doing?

She never walked out to the mailbox to get the mail.

Not once.

Over the past 5 months since Christmas, I had established a flawless track record as the family mail retriever.

I had rehearsed this moment for weeks.

I had established a flawless system.

For this very purpose.

For this once in a lifetime moment.

But there she was, calmly but deliberately making her way toward the mailbox in the pouring rain.

When she reached the mail truck, I watched as she exchanged a few words with the mailman - who, as far as I could tell, had just betrayed me - and then she took the pile of mail from him.

I just stood there at the window, stunned.

Silent.

The hum of the refrigerator behind me.

The rain tapping steadily on the window pane.

Then I watched as my mother began to flip through the stack of mail, pausing on an item that looked suspiciously magazine-shaped and glossy...

She looked down at the cover.

And then - her face twitched.

Then, a flicker of something between disappointment and moral nausea crossed her expression.

And in my mind’s eye, I imagined what she saw:

Paulina Porizkova, bikini-clad and glowing in some amazing tropical location, staring blankly back up at her… blinking once, as if to say, “You’re not going to let your little guy see me, are you?”

And Paulina was right. My mother never did.

That night, I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling like someone who’d just been dumped for the first time.

I tried to process the heart break.

The loss.

The betrayal.

The devastating realization that I would never see Paulina’s sand-dusted thighs, lovingly lit by a team of professional photographers with reflectors and wind machines.

To this day, I don’t know what ever happened to that magazine.

Maybe it was burned in the fireplace.

Or maybe buried in the backyard next to our dead hamster named Franklin.

Or maybe my mom showed it to my dad after he got home from work, and they both had a good laugh at my ridiculous little scheme.

Then maybe she hid it in a secret spot in their bedroom - a place she knew I’d never dare go.

And then - maybe later - one day when she wasn’t around - maybe my dad pulled it out from that secret hiding place, sat down, and began flipping through all those pages of beautiful bikini models, enjoying them all for himself.

The bastard.

What I do know is this:

My mother knew. 

She had always known.

She probably saw through my plan the moment I said the words “Sports Illustrated.”

And she let me go through with it - not out of cruelty, but as a quiet, rain-soaked lesson in humility.

And so now, every May, when Mothers Day comes around and other people are buying floral arrangements and calling their mothers to say thank you...

I do the same.

I thank her.

For her sacrifices.

Her love.

Her patience.

Her guidance.

Her wisdom.

Her unshakable moral compass.

But mostly, I thank her for getting me that subscription to Sports Illustrated Magazine.

Because even though I never got the swimsuit issue, I did learn an important lesson that year.

Actually I learned 2 important lessons that year:

You can plan.

You can plot.

You can calculate every detail and track the mail route and rehearse the heist in your head a thousand times...

But there is no guarantee that everything will work out the way you planned it.

That's lesson number 1.

Lesson number 2, is this...

In the end - you'll never be able to outsmart your mother.

And in a weird roundabout way, that brings me to trading.

Because in trading - similar lessons apply.

Just like with teenage schemes - the moment you feel like a genius is usually the moment you're about to get crushed by the market.

I thought I had outwitted the system.

I had the timeline, the plan, the intel.

But I never accounted for the one variable I couldn't control:

My mom.

And in trading, the market plays that role.

It doesn’t care how clever you are.

It doesn’t reward how hard you worked on your setup.

And it definitely doesn’t respect your fragile sense of confidence.

Success in trading isn’t about pulling off a brilliant one-time heist.

It’s about showing up every day with a plan that actually works.

Even when it rains.

Even when someone beats you to the mailbox.

If you're tired of trading strategies that only work in theory - but fall apart the moment real life shows up - I've been there.

I'll show you how to build trades that actually work in this world.

Not the fantasy one in your head where everything goes exactly as planned.

If you'd like to learn more, just shoot me an email at: Dan@BoomerTrade.com and in the subject line type: "Paulina Porizkova"

Or - just give me a call at my private phone number below.

Usually my son Connor is on it playing games or watching youtube videos, so if I don't pick up right away just leave a message for me after beep and I'll call you back.

And if you're a Mother...

or you have a Mother....

or you've ever tried (and failed) to outsmart one...

or even if you've ever been called a 'Mother ******'....

Happy Mother's Day.

Dan (Boomer Dan, that is)
661-202-0979

P.S. Shoot me an email at Dan@BoomerTrade.com with the words 'Paulina Porizkova'.

Or - just give me a call at my private phone number: 661-202-0979.