Herniated Dignity
My love is exceeding the limit
Robert Plant - "Big Log" - The Principle of Moments - 1982
An early clue that Mom sometimes was disinclined to carefully consider her actions was, uh, logged, during, unfortunately, my 8th birthday party.
As a much younger child, I had surgery for an inguinal hernia. So, throughout childhood I was under notice to not lift anything heavy. Mom was very protective of my inguinal ring. Too bad that diligence didn't so extend to my dignity.
No Corn in this Big Log
At the party we were playing a game and the ball flew into the corner of our yard where the rotted trunk of an old tree laid. I ran there and lifted the log, which was amazingly light in weight for its mass, away from the ball so I could retrieve it. I turned to return to the game, ball in hand, but froze when I saw Mom rushing toward me, lit Kool menthol in hand, bearing a look of great concern.
I almost looked behind me to see what sort of jungle cat was about to pounce on my back, but I noticed her eyes were not looking behind me, but were locked square on my groin. Huh???
It was like some kind of after-the-prom fantasy, exceptin' fer that I was just eight years old and the attractive blonde woman purposefully advancing toward my loins was my mother.
No Corn in this Wee Log 
Before I had time to say “child penis,” Mom squatted and yoinked my shorts down with zero regard for the setting, much less the youthfully skimpy, yet nonetheless protruding organs at the three o' clock position. As I did a little dance in response to that grating surprise, Mom immediately started fooling with my junk, moving the little guys up and down, here and there, to and fro, checking for telltale hernia pooch.
Not only had she forgotten I was a male when she crudely spirited my swim trunks to the ground (ouch!), but the fact that it was my birthday party with a couple dozen of my friends standing there somehow got also got lost in her excitement . I'll never forget my perspective – the blonde arc of Mom's hair below a collage of faces I saw every day at school.
Thank goodness about half of them weren't looking in our direction, but the half that were found it, well, noteworthy. The girls in the deep end of the pool got a box seats view.
ME (quietly): No, Mom, please.....no.
MOM: It's okay.
ME: No.....it's not.
MOM: Sure it is.
Had I possessed my more, um, advanced vocabulary from a year or so later, that exchange would have gone very differently.
I looked down to glimpse her digging among my loins, but had to turn away after receiving a huge eye hit of virgin smoke from the tip of her Kool, gripped between two extended fingers of one hand as the three remaining digits maneuvered my little nut sack about while her other hand bent my pecker out of the way.
Since then, I've had many birthdays involving matters somewhat akin to that scene, but, thankfully were infinitely more pleasant.
The exam ended and she started to return my shorts to a more appropriate birthday party position, but, fearing a repeat of that earlier drive over my speed bumps, I wedged her hands away and urgently pulled 'em up myself, roundly mortified.
Ignoring my chagrin, Mom shook her finger in my face admonished me to never lift anything heavier than an encyclopedia, then returned to her chair in the shade. I just stood there, one eye shut and watering from the smoke attack, holding the damn ball as my best friend laughed his ass off.
Fortunately, the shadow that unfortunate incident cast would be well short of the one from the insane Shit Pimp incident a couple years later. It likely was poised to fall off the back end of my memory, but after 26 years it dashed back to the forefront upon my seeing this great scene from a Malcolm in the Middle episode fittingly entitled "Humilithon."
A Perspicacity Boost
The degree to which functional people can be tone deaf is stunning.
I did learn something from that literal existential deshortsing, though, and that was to run like hell next time Mom came rushing at me with that look on her face. Up to that point, I'd largely thought of Mom as perfect, but, starting to figure out the world, I realized it might be a good idea to keep an eye on that nice, shorts-yoinkin' lady.
That was pretty much the starting point of a resoundingly odd odyssey with Mom that lasted almost exactly 39 years and brought results ranging from superb to abominable.