Kleenex has launched a new website entitled “Get Mommed,” where you can choose a mom to give you “extra care” this cold and flu season. You have your choices of race, ethnicities, socio-economic statuses . . . Are you gagging yet? ‘Cause I am.

I’m sorry, Kleenex, but I already have a mom, and I don’t see her featured there. Maybe that’s because my mom uses Puffs because, until recently, Kleenex deforested virgin rain forests in British Columbia to make their product. So, I’m sorry, hippie Amber. My mom’s more socially aware about products than you, and I’m sorry, Asian Sue, but my mom is as much of a hard-nosed bitch as you (I can say that, you can’t), but she hates Asians ever since she got tired of eating at Chinese restaurants with Dad and I. And, most of all, I’m sorry, Southern Magnolia, but, while I’m sure my mom would find you as adorable as Minnie Pearl, my mom thinks any sort of dancing “conjures up the devil,” and she would find the idea of being a debutante uppity (thank god). But, if you had a tv show like Paula Deene, she would not only watch you, but dvr you and refuse to ever delete you even when the thing was full of you, Paula Deene, John Wayne, Johnny Cash, and Dad’s “This Old House.”

Where is the stereotype of my mom, Kleenex? Where is the country-Southern accented, green-eyed, gray-haired, crooked-toothed (because braces were too expensive) arthritic woman that, in my childhood, sometimes weeped uncontrollably in quiet moments over her dead son, who has a terrible Celtic temper and the best fried squash or broccoli and cheese casserole ever made; who loved her children so much that she prematurely ended her career as a teacher and a librarian to stay home with us and turn our childhoods into education-boot-camp because she wanted us to be able to have the most possibilities in life, but who was too prideful to send us to things like therapy even when she recognized how abusive her eldest son was or her after her youngest’s suicide attempts?

I’ll tell you where she is. She’s at home, in Arkansas–and you can’t have her, ’cause she’s mine.