6. George Washington Was “Ten Times More Afraid” of His Mom Than Anybody Else He Knew
George Washington cutting down a cherry tree, then being unable to lie about it to his father, is the most famous story about the first president’s childhood. In reality, that incident never happened, and was invented out of whole cloth by Mason Locke Weems, one of Washington’s early biographers. However, digging into the boy Washington’s relationship with his mother could yield some true, although less uplifting, tales.
Mary Ball Washington was not monstrous. Indeed, she deserves credit for raising “The Father of His Country”. What made Mary Ball an iffy mother was the lifelong diet of passive-aggressiveness that she fed her son. As George Washington put it, he grew up “ten times more afraid” of Mary than anybody else he knew. She kept making things awkward for him his entire life.
