Mothers, DO NOT USUALLY CALL YOUR ADULT CHILDREN LATE ON SATURDAY NIGHTS! Nothing good, and a lot of harm, can come from this behavior.

The reasons for this seem obvious. But some moms live in a permanent solar eclipse and can’t recognize something that’s as clear as daylight. This note is for them.

To these shadowy individuals, I pose the following questions:

• When, in human history, has a healthy adult male ever preferred spending Saturday nights on the phone with his mother to spending that time with his wife, girlfriend, or friends looking for a girlfriend?
• What general message are you sending to your adult son (not to mention the other women in his life) by regularly calling him on Saturday nights?

I cannot think of a scenario where it would be appropriate for a mother to regularly call her healthy adult son on Saturday nights. If she has a wife, then she must have priority. If he has a girlfriend, then he must take precedence. If you don’t have any, then her needs take precedence.

Just as God created a day of rest, God also created a night of passion. And, in most societies, that night is Saturday. (Notice how God, in his infinite wisdom, created a day of rest immediately after a night of passion.) On that night, his son is pleasing his wife, his girlfriend, or himself. This is normal, healthy behavior for a man and part of what makes the world go round.

When your child is engaged in these activities, and the phone rings and it’s his mom, his first thought is, “Who died?” When he realizes that you just called to say hello, he will be upset. You’ve just ruined her ability to please anyone for the rest of the night, including you.

Imagine you had a special night regularly booked for Sean Connery or Fabio or The Three Tenors to come clean your house and give you a pedicure, and your father kept interrupting these gatherings. Wouldn’t you be mad?

Over time, Sean, Fabio, and Triple-T would probably get tired of these interruptions and stop coming. Wouldn’t you then despair of seeing your house uncluttered and your toes untangled? Or maybe this really happened to you and explains your behavior with your sounds.

If you have a genuine, once-in-a-lifetime emergency on a Saturday night, then yes, by all means, call your child. This will not bother you. In fact, he will enjoy coming to his rescue. It will increase his masculinity.

But these types of emergencies are rare. In fact, I can only think of two:

• Your cat has gotten into a hole in the wall and can’t get out;
• YOU have gotten yourself into a hole in the wall and can’t get out.

Once again, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You get a free pass, and that’s it!

You may be tempted to create false alarms. Do not do it! Unless he gave birth to an idiot, which may be the case if he was living or working in a mental institution or at a Republican convention when he was conceived, his child will pick up on this ploy. As lazy days follow nights of passion, he’ll respond in exasperation with variations of the rhetorical question: “So what do you expect me to do about it!?”

Examples of popular wolf-cry techniques with elderly mothers, as well as what they can expect their children to say in response:

• “My cable went out during The 700 Club!” (“Read your Bible”).
• “I can’t sleep!” (“Take a Tylenol PM.”)
• “I think I’m having a heart attack!” (“Dial 911.”)
• “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” (“Use your life alert”).

Ironically, mothers who do these kinds of things rarely acknowledge their own pathology. That means they will read this memo and think that they and their children are exceptions to the rule.

If this is your case, then I invite you to spend several Saturday nights without calling your son. See if he ever calls you late on a Saturday night. If he does, then he may be too far away. Invite him back to live with you and enjoy a piece of Sara Lee cheesecake.