My mom likes bunnies.

My mother, despite repeated attempts to get her to stop treating me like I'm six years old, called me today and in a babyish voice asked me why I hadn't come by.

She told me that my chocolate bunny had been waiting for me all week and that he was crying and lonely.

"Chocolate bunny?" I asked her.

"You said you were going to come by and do laundry and bring me a book," she said squeakily. "You're supposed to get your chocolate bunny. He's waiting ..."

"I didn't realize there was a sense of urgency behind it," I said.

"So then you're coming by next week?" she asked.

"Um, I can come by tomorrow," I said. "I'm supposed to work at the bookstore, and I'll come by."

On Easter, I was working at the bookstore. While I was there, she left me a voicemail, singing me a "Happy Bunny Day" song. I played it for one of my co-workers, who was caught in a fit of giggles and disbelief over it.

In front of my co-worker, I called my mother back and sang her a medley of happy bunny songs. (Sometimes, I am so a six-year-old.)

She works in mortgage loans and is considered quite accomplished and formidable. The people at the bank probably haven't heard her squeaky bunny voice.

My mom's usually cool, but Easter comes and she goes all OF MICE AND MEN-style bunny-crazy. The only year I didn't get a proper Easter basket from my mom was my junior year in high school, when I skipped out on my family's annual Spring Break vacation to Panama City Beach, the shittiest vacation destination on Earth.

My mom likes bunnies. My mom likes me. My mom liked me best when I was 3 and sang songs and was cute and needed someone to take care of me because I was different and she didn't want the other kids to be mean.

That's what the bunny-baby-talk is about, I guess, and I'm used to it.

Once when I was in high school, I sorta punched my mother in the chest.

It was early. I was half-awake and tired. She came in to wake me up, singing her "Good Morning ... Good Morning ..." song, this sing-songy thing that - when you're tired - is the most damned annoying thing you've ever heard in your entire life.

Good morning, good morning,
There are things to do today ...
Good morning, good morning,
It's time to wake up and play ...
Good morning, good morning,
Let's go and greet the day.

So I'm laying there. And I hear the song, which was her way of waking me up every single day I went to school. And, half awake and lying down facing away from her, I swung my arm back. It hit her in the chest, and she said "Ow" really loud. And my stepfather asked her what had happened. And I apologized and told them that I wasn't really awake and that it was a reflex.

I didn't mean to. I don't think I meant to. I don't know. I hit my mother. It was early. I wasn't thinking right.

Nobody spoke to me the rest of that morning.

(My therapist, hearing this story later, told me that I probably did it because I was "sick of being woken up like a damned infant.")

Until I was about 10, I spoke at home using mostly baby-talk. Seriously. It wasn't until my mother met my stepfather - when I was in the fourth grade - that they decided to break me from the habit.

Weirder, I still do it when I'm in my car, talking to myself. (I said something to Lupo a couple days ago, using a tone, and he referred to it as my "Fievel Mousekewitz" voice.)

My mother told me a couple years ago that, when I was a toddler, she and my father used to speak in baby-talk to one another because it was the only way that they could avoid arguing.

My mother called me this morning, talking to me in her office in that voice about how my chocolate bunny was lonely and crying.

And, remembering that I'm almost 30, it just struck me as a little twisted.