“First off,” writes submitter, who we’ll call Lorelai, “my parents and I have never, ever, ever had any kind of discussion regarding ANYTHING having to do with sex. Mostly because, well, they are my 60-something-year-old parents. And my father is my preacher.”

Today, Lorelai is a 33-year-old “volleyball-coaching, home-owning, full-time working, Girl-Scout-Troop-leading” mother of a “well-behaved, smart, friendly, athletic, violin-playing” daughter, who happens to be the product of unplanned pregnancy 11 years ago.

“Although it took my parents some time to accept the decision I made to raise her (successfully, so far!) on my own, I thought we had moved on,” our submitter says. “Apparently not. My long-distance, very serious, boyfriend will be visiting in a few days, and I guess they wanted to make their stance clear on the matter, eleven years later.”

Lorelai says the follow-up letter from her Mom clarifying to meaning of the card was even more awkward. Sample excerpt:

I guess our gesture was our way of saying ‘We love you and want you to have a healthy sex life, but be careful, because we don’t want you to be hurt like you were before.’

Adds Lorelai: “Maybe some people have this kind of relationship with their parents, but, well, I definitely don’t.”

related: Happy Valentine’s Day to my son…and the harlot with whom he’s living in sin.

DeeAnne recently received this postcard from her mother, who’s vacationing in Hawaii. “After regaling me with the usual tales of beautiful scenery and exotic fauna,” says DeeAnne, “she reminded me that if only I would succumb to her 10,000th ‘hint’ to accept her friend request on Facebook — note the double underline — I too would be able to glimpse paradise.”

And yet, “as you can see, she’s forgiving enough that she’s still willing to show them to me upon her return.” (Phew.)

related: This is what happens when parents use Facebook

extra credit: Saturday Night Live, “Mom’s on Facebook”

Katie doesn’t remember writing this note (which she found while going through old papers of her mom’s) but says, “I do feel sorry for little 11-year-old me, having to deal with being falsely accused of *gasp* faking illness to get out of school, and then having to deal with the humiliation of public grandma affection.”

Adds Katie: “My favorite part is at the beginning where I unintentionally implied that my mother was some kind of slut. (At the time, she worked around a lot of truckers and always had funny stories about them trying to hit on her.) Also, you can totally tell that we had worked on letter-writing/dialogue skills in school recently.”

related: A thinly veiled tattletale

extra credit: “I Enjoy Being a Girl, Sort of” [This American Life]

So, the other day, Olivia’s mother and aunt were having a conversation, and her Mom was fretting about how she’d been overeating this week and how she was going back on her diet the very next day and blahblahblahwhydon’tgrown-upsevertalkaboutanythinginteresting.

Olivia says this inspired her eavesdropping 7-year-old sister to post this helpful reminder where their Mom gets ready in the morning, just to make sure she wouldn’t forget!

related: Please don’t take this the wrong way, pregnant lady, but have you considered Weight Watchers?

Joe is an elementary school teacher in Long Beach, California. On the last day of summer school, he got this goodbye letter from one of his students. “It was really cute and sweet,” Joe says. “However, she does mention in the card that I am ‘not that smart.’ I asked her why she thought that, and apparently it’s because she saw me ask another teacher a question about grammar. Hilarious.”

Brandy in Citrus Heights, California received a note with a similar mixed message from her then-six-year-old daughter, who’s now 14. Really, I’m just glad just this letter wasn’t signed “love, your girlfriend.” Because that would not be cute.

related: Mommy, I love you sometimes!!!!

extra credit: So Nice, So Smart [iLike]

Emily says her parents in Massachusetts recently dug out this note from the family archives, written when Emily was six. (She’s now a high school English teacher.)

“None of us have any recollection of the circumstances surrounding it,” Emily says, “but my mother must have done something pretty awful to warrant such a melodramatic note, my six-year-old rage boiling just below the surface.”

Adds Emily: “Given my use of the word ‘steepping,’ I also apparently confused my parents with bags of tea.”

related: My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Parents

So, KC in Washington, D.C. has a blog, which her mother reads and finds “somewhat amusing, to an extent.” Not everything KC writes meets with Mom’s approval, however.

“She never lectures me,” KC says. “Instead, she post-it notes her grievances and puts them in places I have no other choice but to look at” — a Kix cereal box, for example. (Which I have to admit, I find pretty goddamn adorable.)

related: Sometimes, Mom is (actually, maybe, a little bit) right.

Thank you, Mom, for really trying to not say cuss words around me.

Sara in Easton, Maryland received this mother’s day card made by her 7-year-old daughter in school. “Yes, I sometimes have a potty mouth,” Sara says, “but I’m working on it, dammit! I just hope her teacher didn’t judge me too harshly…”

Meanwhile, Allison in Columbia, South Carolina found this sad little bookmark in a public library book. (An Amy Tan novel, naturally.)

related: Thanks, Mom, for reminding me why I moved out in the first place.