"What do you mean, you've got subscribers?" I asked Mom as she placed the coffee cup before me at her kitchen bench.
She laughed and it was nice to see her happy this close to her divorce.
"Just what I said," she giggled. "On the internet thingy, the youtubes."
I shook my head dramatically.
"What are you even talking about? When do you get on the internet?"
I considered my mother a luddite when it came to technology. Attempts over the years to have her enter the twenty first century had succinctly failed in every respect. To hear she was online and had 'subscribers' of all things was a bolt from the blue.
"Marjorie from the book club helped me," she smiled, sipping her own coffee. I knew the woman vaguely. Older than my mother's fifty five years, the situation was becoming more absurd the more I learnt.
"So how did this all come about?" I asked, actually interested and somewhat bemused.
"Well it was after the ice bucket thing we all did," Mom began. "All the girls were putting their videos on their public media websites..."
"Social media," I corrected her.
"Uh huh, and because I didn't have one Marjorie offered to set it up for me."
"Wait, what ice bucket thing?" I quizzed, now more confused. Sure I hadn't visited Mom in over two weeks but all of a sudden it felt like I knew nothing about her.
Mom threw back her head and again laughed.
"Oh goodness, I haven't seen you lately have I!?" She remarked as if reading my mind. "We all did the ice bucket challenge, the girls in the book club. It's for charity. You have a bucket of icy water poured over y..."
"Yeah I know what it is," I again interrupted. "I want to know how it is you've all of a sudden embraced technology."
"Well again, it was Marjorie," she explained, placing down her mug and heading across the room to her handbag. What happened next was nothing short of astounding as Mom pulled out a new iPad and brought it across to me.
"What's the deal with the iPad?" I asked, bewildered.
"Well, again it was.."
"Marjorie?" I chuckled.
Mom slapped me playfully on the arm as she came to a stop beside me.
"Yes, Marjorie helped me buy it. She said it was the most user friendly..."
The blank look on her face told me that 'user friendliness' didn't extend to helping my mother turn the thing on and I casually slipped it from her grasp and started up the tablet.
"And you've got a YouTube channel!?" I mused as I handed it back to her to fumble with.
"Mmh huh," she affirmed as she placed the screen back down before me and played the video.
The volume was down so I was unable to hear the first few words to come out of my mother's mouth as she laughed and smiled at the camera. Standing on the lawn of a nondescript back yard, my mother was dressed in grey ¾ leggings and a printed white t-shirt, the lettering of which I had trouble reading.
"Where was this?" I asked as she crept behind me to look over my shoulder for a better view whilst I raised the volume.
My mother about to answer, I once again butted in.
"Marjorie's!"
Mom mimicked strangling me, suggesting my assumption had been correct and as the video progressed, dropped her hands from my neck to rest upon my shoulders.
Finished addressing the camera, a younger woman entered the frame holding a sizeable bucket and without ado, raised it above my mother's head and tipped.
Apart from the sound of the icy water splashing the ground and my mother's gasping, cheering and laughter could be heard from behind the camera, but it wasn't what caught my attention. The white t-shirt had raised my eyebrows when I first saw it and now the water had had its effect upon it, I was justified in my concern. Completely transparent, it had turned. What looked to be a flesh colored bra underneath did nothing to obscure my mother's sizeable breasts, leaving her in a state that seemed nothing short of topless.
Mom laughed from behind, clutching my shoulders harder.
"Oh goodness, you have no idea how cold it was!" She explained but as the camera zoomed slowly in on her, the erect state of her nipples went some way to conveying.
It was uncomfortable. I was looking at my mother's breasts. She hadn't so much as worn a bikini in my presence for twenty years that I could recall and now here she was revealing herself in what was nothing less than a wet t-shirt contest.
"Look at my face when the water hits me," Mom enthused as she leaned over my shoulder and scrolled the video back a minute.
Suddenly her presence behind me wasn't so unobtrusive as her cheek brushed against mine and I felt the softness of what could only have been her boobs pressing my back. Innocently of course, but the fact I was looking at her breasts whilst also feeling them made it seem all the more intimate.
Again I watched the water turn her shirt transparent and I felt I had to say something.
"So what made you go for a white t-shirt?" I asked, seeking an answer as to why my reserved mother would choose an item of clothing she must surely have known would become see-through.
"Oh that's just our book club t-shirt," she dismissed, again laughing at her response to the water being dumped on her.
I forced myself to look closer at her chest and could now make out the words, 'readers do it with the lights on' plastered across her tits.
Again the video came to a close, pausing on an image of Mom, her hair wet and plastered to her head, the front of her leggings saturated as if she'd peed herself and her breasts clearly visible. I'd never, ever, seen her in this light. It was almost as if I looked upon a different woman altogether.
I didn't quite know what to say and thankfully it was Mom who broke the sudden silence as she took away the iPad and moved to the other side of the bench with her coffee.
"Oh wow, I've got another five hundred subscribers!"
"What?"
To prove it she turned the screen to display the evidence and my jaw dropped. Two and a half thousand people had subscribed to her channel, the video displaying more than fifty thousand views.
