Neil Simon meets Sholem Aleichem

Last week my roommate thought she saw a scorpion & freaked out.  We do occasionally get scorpions in the house & I hate them with  a passion.  My roommate used to be the one to kill them cause I was so afraid & disgusted by them.  The job of scorpion killer has fallen to me like almost every other job in this house.  I was on the phone when she told me there was a scorpion across the room.  I told her to step  on it & squish it as much as she could & that I would come with the dust buster as fast as I could.  Meanwhile, I was holding the phone between my ear & shoulder & accidentally disconnected the phone call. (They must have thought I was nuts cause they could hear my end of this conversation.  Fortunately, they called back by the time this episode was over.  The person I was speaking to had no sense of humor & no experience with scorpions.)  I got the dust buster & asked my roommate to lift her foot.  She did & what was there? A piece of cat hair! No scorpion.  My roommate went to the bathroom & came back all in a "tizzy".  Her voice was tremulous & she said she was "shaking like a leaf".  I asked why & she said the scorpion episode scared her death.  I'm not sure what exactly I said, but it was something like "Well, no big deal, it was just cat hair".  She said "Well thanks for all of the sympathy" with her voice dripping with sarcasm.(Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs popped into my head)  I was aghast.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  This from a woman who thinks I'm weak because I get upset about having had cancer, a broken ankle & a kidney stone at the same time.  Despite knowing better I answered "You're kidding, right?" She said no.  I said (again knowing better) "This coming from a woman who can only show me sympathy when I'm laying on the floor with a broken bone?" (Neil Simon again).  She said "Yes" & something about how she has to remind me to keep a stiff upper lip.  (You'd think we were British, not Jewish~~yeah I realize you can be both) So I say something to the effect that sympathy seems to only travel UP the family tree(OK, the fiction ends, the "roommate" is my mom).  She said "Yes".  I asked why, she said (this is where Fiddler On the Roof enters the story) "Because I am the Mama!" There was nothing to do but leave the room & laugh.  Thank G-d I get plenty of support from lots of other people.