By TIM RATH

Sports Editor

Whenever I have the urge to complain about the conspiracy that the big man upstairs is obviously plotting, I try to remember those whom have it worse off.

Doomed children in third world countries are infrequently brought up. I say a little prayer for forgotten veterans of foreign wars.

Rejected “Flavor of Love” contestants are a popular bet, but mothers typically are not.

Regardless of where we live, we all come from a woman that carries us in her belly for nine months, cleans up our puke and worries about us even if we’re just reading the paper.

Doesn’t seem like a fair reward for someone so righteous.

My mom is great.

As I grew up, she knew when to lay down the law and when to let me discover consequences on my own.

She worked endlessly to instill me with her values and wasn’t upset when I rejected some of them.

Somehow, she found enough time to cook, clean, work and teach.

Somehow, the only thing I ever taught her was how much one diaper could really hold.

She taught me about Motown, The Beatles and Memphis.

She taught me how to swim, how to dance and how to shoot a jump shot.

She taught me how to fry an egg, how to play the clarinet and she did it without the benefit of a single college class.

As a testament to my respect for her teaching methods, I have spent four years and thousands of dollars at college and still can only retain these simple skills.

Life as a single mother is tough, but I’ve never heard my mom cry about it. She was always too busy to. Whether it was driving me to countless extracurricular activities in my youth, defending my honor against the school bully’s parents or explaining why aliens weren’t going to snatch me up in my sleep in my hormone-ravaged adolescence.

True indeed, I was a pretty weird kid, but never weird enough to freak her out. My mom is ridiculously accepting like that; happy with me even as I’m protesting a war that she supports, debating the merits of my dad, explaining “yo mama” jokes to her or putting in long hours as the Oakland Post’s only unpaid reporter.

I’m sure that there are times that she flips through the Post and wonders why her son couldn’t have been Mouthing Off editor Alex Cherup instead, but just like me, she sees the brighter side: “Because then I couldn’t brag about his automatic jump shot.”

If you’re like me, you don’t live with your mom any more.

If you’re a lot like me, you’re also as broke as a joke.

And if we’re really, truly one and the same, you’ve spent a lot of time longingly browsing www.tiffany.com for the first time in your life, wishing that you could afford to FedEx your mom the diamond necklace that she deserves.

Hopefully this column from her slacker son who should’ve gone into law school (so says dad) will be a suitable thank-you even if it’s being published four days after Mother’s Day.

If you’re like me, you’ve been weighed down with problems nearly tough enough to have forgotten Sunday, the 11th.

Hopefully, this column will remind you to consider those that have it worse off.

And don’t forget the other mothers!

Everyone from grandmas and Mother Earth, to Mother Goose and “Yo Mama” jokes deserve extra love. So get to it, no matter how late you are.