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I once wrote a column that was so offensive (to someone) that they ended up calling my house to tell me how upset about it they were. Luckily for both the caller and myself, my husband was the one who answered the phone, and his response, after listening to a long rant about how “inappropriate,” “offensive,” and “thoroughly unpleasant” I was was a heartfelt “Yeah? Try living with her, pal,” followed by hanging up. And that was the end of it. Of course, this story could have had a very different ending: I’m sure that the offended caller could just as easily have found my address as they did my phone number.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not so conceited as to compare what I do with political satirists like the artists and writers at Charlie Hebdo, but as a fellow humorist and satirist I couldn’t help but experience a frisson of sympathetic fear upon hearing about the attack that left twelve people dead at the offices of the Paris publication.

All because of a joke.

Predictably, as time has passed people have started to water down their shock and outrage over the incident with qualifiers, typically expressed as “I’m not saying anybody deserves to die, but…” (This might be most familiar to fans of the “I’m not saying she was asking for it, but what was she doing wearing that skirt, anyway?” trope.) These qualifiers completely miss the point. The point is not whether or not Charlie Hebdo is offensive (Is it? Maybe. Probably. At least to some people—obviously), but whether or not it is the role of the satirist to offend.

I am of the firm belief that it is the role of the satirist to point out the flaws in our deeply held beliefs so that we may re-examine them with new eyes. In fact, satire is one of the most powerful forms of social commentary I know, because using the guise of humor allows the speaker to say things that go much further than ever would be tolerated in a simple op-ed piece. We’ve known this to be true since medieval times—the jester wasn’t there to entertain, he was there to speak the truths no one else could. Even when those truths were offensive.

Here’s the thing about humor: jokes don’t work when they’re watered down. There’s a reason people stop telling knock-knock jokes past the age of eight: the older we get, the more it takes to make us laugh. Which is why a good humorist always tries to get as close to the edge as possible. And, as anyone who likes to live life on the edge can tell you, every now and then you are going to fall off.

I don’t remember what I had written about that was offensive enough to make someone call my house. But I don’t dispute that it probably was offensive. It was, at the very least, close to the edge of offensive, if not not a few toes over it. And while my husband and I appreciated the laugh we shared over the phone call, a better way for the reader to get her point across would have been to simply stop reading. Because that is what really tells us when we have gone too far.

I read a recent interview with Chris Rock where he talked about how necessary it was for comedians to be able to try out new material in front of an audience, because the only way a comic knows if something is working if it makes people laugh. There is no other gauge. He also spoke about how when comics find the jokes that don’t work—that instead offend the audience—they take them out. Every time. Because if no one is laughing, it isn’t a joke.

Isn’t that funny?

Although they say that eavesdroppers seldom hear anything pleasant, my experience with being an eavesdropper has been nothing but delightful. Well, except for the times when the people I am eavesdropping on start to talk about me, but even that’s not altogether unpleasant. After all, love me or hate me it’s still an obsession, right? And think about all of the juicy bits you get to hear in those brief moments when they are not talking about you. All those lovely moments when you suddenly find yourself in possession of this season’s “it” piece of gossip.

Here’s the question: are you one of those people who still experiences schadenfreude when you look through the unhappy Facebook pages of people you couldn’t stand in high school? And more importantly, are you not one of those people who reacts to every surprise with a loud gasp or a squeal? (In other words, do people avoid sitting next to you at the movies?) If the answers to the above questions are yes (except for the movie one, of course), then eavesdropping might just be the perfect hobby for you.

Yes, I must say that I would recommend a lifetime of eavesdropping to anyone. It livens up those boring solo meals, helps you find out what is going on in the world without having to actually engage with other people, and, occasionally, puts you in possession of the season’s “must have” bit of gossip. It’s awesome. Which is why I’m so very sad that my children have ended up being so very bad at it.

Just like the first rule of fight club is never to talk about fight club, the first rule of eavesdropping is to never let the people you are eavesdropping on know that you are, in fact, listening to them. This might mean pretending to read your menu over and over while you are listening to the couple at the table next to you redefine the parameters of their relationship (and looking like you really are the type of person who would snort and giggle at the burger descriptions), or snoring convincingly while the person next to you on the train discusses their symptoms with their doctor (hopefully they’re discussing them with their doctor—they sound kind of serious). Regardless of the situation, being a good eavesdropper means never alerting your target to the fact that you are listening to them, either by expressing shock, amusement, or confusion. This is a lesson my children just can’t seem to learn. Especially the part about confusion.

Without fail I will be in the middle of hearing a juicy bit of gossip, when halfway through the story one of my kids will poke their heads around the corner to ask for a clarification. “How many times did she cheat on him?” or some such question, causing the gossip well to dry up so fast it was hard to tell it was ever there in the first place. They will even do this at the expense of a bit of gossip that could benefit them: I could be just about to find out a damning tidbit about one of their mortal enemies, and right as the speaker is about to provide me with the good part (read: the blackmail worthy part) one of my children will interrupt to ask for some minor clarification that causes the tale to be put off with a knowing “I’ll tell you later.”

I’d like to think that this self-sabotage is being done because my children are better people than I am, and are trying to avoid hearing anything unpleasant about anyone, but the truth is that while they are somewhat better than I am, they aren’t that much better. Although, now that I think about it, they do probably tend to hear much better things about themselves.

I know that this is something I’ve complained about before in this space, but it bears repeating: my kids are really, really bad at lying. But here’s the thing: yours are bad at it, too. This is the conclusion I have come to after some very unscientific research conducted with me, a few of my fellow parents, and several bottles of wine. In other words, we were all sitting around kvetching about our children, and the grand conclusion we all arrived at was this: kids these days just don’t know how to lie.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: they try. They’re just so bad at it that it would probably be better for all concerned if they just gave up and actually did the thing they were trying to get out of in the first place. Take brushing your teeth, for example. Back in my day we went to the effort of wetting the toothbrush, squeezing a little toothpaste out into the trashcan and then spending a few minutes standing around in the bathroom with the water running, all to create a good illusion. (The fact that all that effort could have just as easily been spent actually brushing our teeth is not lost on me.) But kids these days don’t even bother going into the bathroom—for all they know you could have wrapped their toothbrush in twenty dollar bills as a test. (I actually had a friend who used a version of that trick—he hid a ten dollar bill under the keyboard cover on their piano to test out his theory that no one was really practicing at all. He was kind of sad when at the end of the week he got his ten dollars back.)

The final straw in the “kids these days just can’t lie” pile came when I was talking to a friend about her son’s band grade: it seems that he was getting a “B” because he wasn’t turning in his weekly practice logs. The reason that he wasn’t turning them in wasn’t because he wasn’t practicing. And it wasn’t because he was losing them in the fifteen minutes between home and school every Monday (this is what happened with my kids.) No, he wasn’t turning them in because he wasn’t filling them out. At all. The gravity of the situation gave me immediate pause—this was about so much more than a simple practice log.

“Wait a minute,” I asked. “Do you mean to tell me that he actually believes he needs to fill out his practice logs with the truth?”

“Yep,” she replied. I stared at her in amazement, because it isn’t like her son is planning on entering the priesthood any time soon, or finishing off his final requirements for his Eagle Scout badge. He’s a normal sneaky kid. Just like mine. And yet, he has somehow overlooked this opportunity to tell an easy lie.

It’s not integrity. (See: Boy Scout, not one, above). It’s a lack of real world lying experience. Back in my day (here I go again) I would have grabbed 26 copies of the practice log sheets and filled them all out the first week of school, making sure to vary the practices times just enough so that there was no discernible pattern. Then I would have put them all in my backpack and pulled a fresh one out every Monday morning. This would have freed up enough time for me learn how to write really small notes on my wrists and knees for use during math finals, and other important school-avoiding related activities.

Dishonest? Absolutely. Realistic? Even more so. And, unfortunately, almost completely beyond your average high-schooler these days. It’s enough to make me wonder who this generation plans on using for lawyers and politicians at all.

Sometimes people ask me how I knew that I was ready to have children, which I think is kind of like asking someone trapped beneath a building how they knew they were ready to settle down. The answer, at least, is the same: do I really look ready for anything right now? But I get that what they are really asking is how do they know that they are ready to have children, and for that question I actually have an answer. Well, at least I have a test.

Pay someone to hide your shoes.

Every morning. Or rather, every night, before you go to bed. I’m not saying that children will take your shoes away from you (except for those fifteen minutes between growth spurts when your son is wearing the same size shoe as you, or on those rare—very rare—occasions when the shoes you buy happen to be considered “cute” enough for your daughter to steal); no, what I’m saying is that when you are a parent there will be valuable time spent every single morning searching for somebody’s shoes, and it would be better to find out now whether or not you can handle it.

Although “handle it” might be sugar-coating it, because no one is capable of “handling it” every morning. That’s because for every morning that you approach the daily shoe hunt from your happy place—beatific (or heavily medicated—your choice) smile firmly in place—there will be another morning when you stand in the middle of the living room doing your best Mommy Dearest impression, eyes flashing and teeth gnashing as you vow to bring down all the wrath of heaven and hell upon the next person who dares to place their shoes anywhere but the pre-appointed spot. (Yeah, my kids still do an impression of me from that one time—one time, I swear—that I totally lost it over a pair of shoes.)

Still, you might be wondering why I am advising you to hire someone to hide your own shoes from you, and not just hide a random pair of stranger’s shoes in your house instead. Well, for one, that’s kind of creepy, and for another, even though you might think you can replicate these feelings by having a pretend hunt, trust me, you can’t. Although, in the end, when you are already running late it really doesn’t matter whose shoes you are tearing a part the house looking for, because the end result is the same: chaos and despair.

Sometimes, when I explain this parenting test to people, their reaction is, “Well, that won’t be the case in my house, because I’m going to make sure my children know how to be organized.” My reply is always—well, usually—a demure, “I hope that works out for you.” At least out loud. Inside, I’m too busy chortling for much else. That, and trying to hold back from saying, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

We all start out with plans for being organized. We buy the tubs, and the bins, and drawers, and we label them “ballet shoes,” “soccer cleats,” “dress shoes,” etc., and we feel calm and prepared for the upcoming season. And then the perfect storm of dance recital followed by ra eception followed by an early morning game the next day happens, and suddenly you’re back in the shoe hunt game once more—with a vengeance.

Perhaps one day they’ll come up with some kind of shoe security device that lets you locate a pair of shoes the same way car alarms help you find your car in the parking lot. Of course, with the sheer number of shoes most families lose a day, most neighborhoods would sound like the aftermath of an earthquake every morning.

Although that would be an improvement over the screams of frustrated parents.

Last year my daughter, Clementine, went away for four months to study abroad. When she came back her little brother Clyde was so happy she was home (really) that he dashed out of the house to greet her, at which point Clementine screamed and ran away. It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy to see him, too—it was just that while she was gone he had grown about four inches, and it was just past midnight, and from her perspective all she knew was that this big, strange guy had just run up out of nowhere and tried to grab her.

I thought it was funny.

I also thought it was funny the next morning, when Clyde stood next to her in the kitchen and smirked down at her to say, “Hi, Shorty.” And I thought it was funny when I got to draw the new lines on the door frame growth chart and Clyde’s new line was so much higher than Clementine’s. In fact, I thought it was absolutely hysterical right up until the point where Clyde grew another few inches seemingly over night, and suddenly he was taller than me. And then it wasn’t so damn funny anymore.

Logically I knew it was bound to happen, which is why my head reacted to the whole situation so calmly. However, my heart only knows about logic from a distance, and therefore my heart still reacted to it all by standing around screaming Holy !@#$. (Figuratively, obviously.) So yeah: as “normal” as I know all this is, the fact that Clyde is now taller than me is moderately freaking me out.

Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things: it has been well over a decade since I could settle any arguments with him simply by picking him up and carrying him to his room. Still, it was nice to know that for a while there at least I still had the option. (Although, I suppose technically I still do—there’s always the fireman’s carry.) And, hey, at least this way I’m closer all the time to having someone around who can see all the dust on the top of the cabinets (oh, wait: that’s not a good thing).

Clementine, of course, after her initial freak out, is now handling the whole thing better than I am. I’d like to think it’s because she’s had more time to adjust, but the real reason is probably that she’s just that much cleverer. Within a week of returning home and seeing the new lay of the land (or perhaps height of the land would be more apt) she had reassessed the situation and come up with a solid plan for her continued sibling world domination: for every inch Clyde grows, Clementine adds another chapter to her magnum opus, How to Destroy Little Brothers for Fun and Profit. (That might not actually be the name of her book—it’s just what I call it in my head.)

This means that even though Clyde has now started to tower over her physically, she still stands head and shoulders above him when it comes to psychological torment. He might be able to pick her up now (literally), but with just a few well chosen words she can just as easily knock him down. It’s a sister thing, one that is fueled, no doubt, by the fact that they go to the same school, and so she therefore has about eight more hours of material a day to work with. And work with it she does: she uses the material she gathers at home to keep him in his place at school, and the material she gathers at school to torment him at home. It’s merciless. It’s cruel. It’s diabolical. And, ultimately, it works.

Now if only she would share her tricks with me.

Can someone please explain to me how it is that I came to be the least scary person in my children’s lives? I don’t understand it: I’m the one who yells at them, who threatens them, who takes away all the things they hold dear (and the controllers to those things), and all of this for “absolutely no reason whatsoever.” I’m the one who is “crazy,” “pathetic,” a “control freak,” “anal retentive,” and “clueless.” (And those are just the PG ones.) I’m the one who, “seriously, just needs to chill out.” And yet, when it comes to asking for favors, I am somehow still the least threatening person on the planet.

I’m less threatening than the girl behind the counter, apparently. Somehow the fear of coming back to me empty-handed shrinks away into nothing when compared to the fear of asking a cheerful counter girl for a to go box. And I’m less scary than some random guy on the sidewalk: it’s better to come back to me and straight up lie about whether or not someone was in possession of a timepiece than it is to simply ask a stranger if they have the time.

It’s also less scary to call me up late at night and ask for a ride than it is to accept the ride your friend’s parent offered you, as it is less scary to ask me to drive all the way back across town to retrieve your homework than it is to call up your friend and ask them to bring it with them to school tomorrow.

Of course, I’m not the only thing that is less scary then some of these (apparently) terrifying scenarios. For some reason it is also less scary to watch a scary movie or play a violent video game then it is to ask a teacher to accept a late assignment. Even though I’m pretty sure most teachers don’t react to those types of questions with the kind of murderous rage that can be found in said movies and games—I mean, it’s not like the teacher is going to pull out an enormous axe so that they can chop you up and/or then set you on fire. (Something the characters in these games and movies do with surprising frequency. It’s a bit of overkill, if you ask me—from the way most movie killers work it can be assumed that they are used to being paid by the hour. No one on salary would ever work so inefficiently.) To me, that’s scary. And yet, to my children, all that pales in comparison to asking where the bathroom is.

Of course, maybe that is the real question. Not why it is that huge, inefficient axe murderers (and angry mothers) aren’t scary enough, but rather why someone sitting behind an information desk is. Or better yet, since there are some questions (especially those concerning the teenage psyche) we will probably never know the answer to, perhaps the best question of all is: how do I make these phobias work for me?

If I was a movie maker the answer would be obvious: forget having the creepy little girl hiding under the bed, and instead replace her with a cute boy you have to ask to borrow a pencil from. But it gets more complicated on my end: there’s probably something illegal (and more than a little creepy) about asking the “terrifying” hostess at the local pizza joint to come over and tell your kids it’s time to start studying for their math final. And there’s no way you’re going to get the scary “man with no watch” to come ask them when they ever plan on getting around to cleaning their rooms.

But the giant axe guy just might have an opening for the holidays.

First off, let me make one thing clear: I am not one of those people who insist on eating their pizza with a fork. Nor do I use a fork to eat french fries, or nachos, or snickers bars: these foods are called “finger foods” for a reason. So don’t go thinking that my insistence on the presence of cutlery means that I have some weird obsession with not touching my food. I don’t. It’s just that, no matter how deeply you embrace food truck culture, no matter how many servings of cheesecake-on-a-stick you end up consuming, there are still some foods that require the use of a fork. So much so that I sometimes suspect the fork was invented just for them. Foods like salad.

Salad needs a fork. Sometimes, depending on how lazy the person who was preparing the salad was, a knife and a fork, but always, at the bare minimum, a fork. Which explains why I was in my son Clyde’s room at four o’clock this morning with a flashlight and a bad attitude.

“What are you doing?” he asked blearily.

“Trying to eat a !@#$ salad!” I replied, shoving a pile of dirty towels off a dresser. The towels landed with an disturbingly un-towel-like sounding crash.

“What?” he asked again, still confused.

I didn’t take the time to enlighten him, because at that moment I spotted a fork sticking out of the towel disaster on the floor. “You’re cleaning this up today,” I said on my way out.

That woke him up. “But you’re the one who made the mess!”

“Hardly,” I replied. And then, wishing for an autoclave but settling for scalding hot water and soap, I cleaned my hard won fork and ate my salad. (Sometimes I like to eat salad for breakfast. And I like to eat breakfast very early. Don’t judge.)

In general I’m pretty lax about the state my children keep their rooms in; as long as they aren’t structurally damaging the house I’m content to let them stew in their own filth, knowing that one day their sense of self preservation will kick in and they’ll at least get the knives off of the floor (or not—either way one day they’ll be living on their own, and if nothing else I can always get them chainmail socks for Christmas).

The point at which I draw the line, however, is when their rooms get so bad that they become miniature black holes, slowly and inexorably pulling everything in their reach into their maw. Things like forks. And towels. (Or, in the weird mutation that seemed to be happening in Clyde’s room, some sort of towel/fork transporter failure nightmare.)

Part of me

First of all, let me tell you how very pleased I am with my decision to have my daughter first. (For all of you who are thinking, wait a minute, you didn’t get to choose the sex of your baby, all I can say back is hush, let me have my moment.) Because it’s not often that I do something involving my children that goes so absolutely and completely right.

Having the girl first has worked out brilliantly: it’s like having an extra nag. Just when I think I’ve reached the end of my nagging limit (hard to believe, I know, but it does happen sometimes), Clementine is there the to tap in and take over. And not only that, but she manages to bring a fresh twist to the nagging as well, so that not only is her subject/victim being nagged with renewed vigor, but he is also being nagged from an entirely differently angle, one that he hasn’t even begun to put up a defense against.

Consider the other night. After nearly five solid years of nagging at my son, Clyde, to organize his backpack I was, if not “done,” then at least taking an extended, year-long break. I listened to Clyde lament the fact that he had lost his homework yet again, and all I could manage was a snarky, “That’s a shame. If only you had something safe to put your homework in every night. Something you take to school every day anyway. Something small enough to carry over your shoulder, yet big enough to hold all of your assignments. That would be awesome. Can you think of anything you have that would work?”

And then Clyde opened his bag and I swear I could hear the Scooby Doo theme playing in the background as bats flew out, and there was no way I could muster the energy for one more bit of sarcasm. Which is exactly when Clementine came to my rescue. She took one look at the mess of Clyde’s backpack and said, “Dude, no. What is this?”

“These are things my teachers told me to save,” Clyde replied, defensively. And that’s when Clementine’s nagging left mine in the dust.

Hands on her hips, eyes rolled up to the ceiling, Clementine shook her head and said, “Don’t listen to your teachers.” And Clyde was hooked. He listened, rapt, as Clementine explained her system of organizing homework. “First thing you do,” she said, “is get a folder and label it ‘Crap.’ Then you put everything that your teachers give you in that folder and you leave it on your desk at home. Chances are you’ll go the whole year without opening it, but if you do need something from it you’ll know where it is. At home.”

I felt like I was watching someone being introduced to “The Secret:” part of me wanted to let loose the “oh, please,” that was trapped in my mouth, and another part was saying, “Eh, let them believe what they want.” But probably the biggest part of me was just grateful that someone else was dealing with the Garbage Bag Formerly Known As Backpack.

And then she went above and beyond in her nagging duties. Clementine rode that nag all the way back into the barn: she then went into a tirade about the state of Clyde’s desk and his handwriting, and he listened to her yet again. It was truly a Triple Crown nagging achievement.

And that’s when I realized that the day had come when the student passed the teacher. And I was surprisingly okay with that.

At least, I was until she turned to me and said, “And about your purse…”

Recently, a friend of mine told me a story that made me both instantly and insanely jealous. He told me that he had been paying some bills and had noticed that there was an unusually large amount of money in his account. Concerned that some checks had failed to clear, he spent a long time time going over his account to try and find out exactly when the problem began, only to finally trace it to a point sometime in the early summer. Which, coincidentally, was the same time his youngest child had graduated from college. That’s when he realized that there wasn’t a mistake in his account: the reason there was such an unusually large amount of was because, for the first time in over a quarter of a century, he wasn’t paying for anybody but himself and his wife. He felt like he had just gotten a raise.

Personally, I think when that glorious day comes I will feel more like one of those athletes who trains all year with extra weights on their ankles, or an open parachute on their back, or maybe with their legs tied together in the pool. I imagine myself bursting out of the starting gate with so much extra energy (read: money) and spring in my step that it doesn’t even feel like I’m actually running, but rather like I’ve just had my wings unclipped for the first time in years.

Does that sound too harsh? Don’t get me wrong: I love both my children, and am still happy with my choice to have them, but damn, are they expensive. I mean, they cost me money all the time. And I don’t just mean for the extra stuff, like ballet shoes and soccer uniforms, but for the stuff that no one would ever consider to be luxuries. Like ramen. And sheets.

Yes, sheets. Four people in one house means at least two beds (unless your life is a skit from Hee Haw), and twice as many beds means twice as many sheets. Which means that you’ll either be spending twice as much money on linen, or the same amount of money and just get crappier stuff. At least for the children. (Come on, there’s no reason that both of us should suffer from a low thread count. I mean, at least I’m still going to have my sheets in a few years; the ones I buy for the kids’ beds will invariably be lost by then. How, you ask, does one manage to lose a sheet? No clue. No clue whatsoever. I’ve found it best for my own sanity if I don’t look too deeply into those things anyway.)

There’s also the multiplication factor when it comes to things like vacations (any airline ticket times four is painful), phone plans, and even books. (There was no way Clementine and I were going to share the seventh Harry Potter book—which meant, of course, two books.)

When they were younger I thought that having two kids meant that at least there were some things I would get to reuse, but, of course I ended up having children of not only two different genders but also two very different personalities. I don’t think Clyde is going to passing his size ten ballet shoes down to Clementine anytime soon, and even if he was willing to wear any of her ”Pro-Feminist Cat “ hand-me-downs, I think that ship sailed when he got to be five inches taller than her. And counting.

Still, wheneverI get too down about my fiscal hemorrhaging, I think of my friend and his late life “raise” and I feel slightly mollified. And hopeful. Just think: I’ll be like the guy who liked to hit himself in the head with a hammer. Why? “Because it always feels so good when I stop.”

My son, Clyde, has always hated fruit. Doesn’t really matter what kind: apples, grapes, kumquats, persimmons (which I also think are gross)—it’s all yucky to him. There are two fruits, however, that he holds in particularly high disregard, and those are watermelon and bananas.

It makes sense, I suppose. There is nothing halfway about either one of those fruits: they can’t play both sides, like tomatoes, avocados, or even cranberries. Watermelon and bananas are some of the fruitiest of fruits. And so of course they would just happen to be the two fruits that other people are always the most likely to try to get him to eat.

The watermelon thing comes up every summer without fail, but the banana thing can happen any place, any time. It just so happens that the most memorable banana experience also happened to take place in the summertime. We were vacationing with friends, and in an effort to make the last day’s clean up easier we made a meal out of all of the various bits and pieces of food that were left over, including a very large fruit bowl. Unbeknownst to me (I was in the kitchen attempting to make a thirty-six egg omelet), the fruit from this fruit bowl was handed out one piece per child, with instructions to “eat this before you eat anything else.”

Clyde, of course, got a banana.

My husband eventually found him sitting at the table, banana in front of him, sad but defiant. “What are you doing, Clyde?” he asked. “We need you to help pack.”

“I don’t want to eat the banana,” Clyde replied.

My husband, also unaware of the fruit proclamation, was understandably confused. “So don’t eat the banana,” he said.

“Okay,” Clyde answered, relieved, and scampered off to not help us pack in some other way. And that was that. Until his banana mutiny was discovered, some yelling happened, and my husband put his foot down and defended Clyde’s right to not eat the banana. On the drive home we all joked about it, turning Clyde’s refusal into a kind of McArthur moment complete with Clyde standing atop the dining room table declaring, “I shall not eat the banana!”

For months after that we used those words as shorthand in our family, our way of saying, “Look, I know you really want me to do this thing, but I’m just not into it, okay?” And then we forgot about it. Until last week, when Clyde’s ballet class had “Parent Week” and I caused a minor kerfuffle by refusing to go dance in the studio with all of the other parents.

Clyde was mortified. Apparently I embarrassed him. I tried to explain my reasoning to him, tried to explain that I had every right to say no, all to no avail. He just didn’t get it. At least he didn’t until we got home and told my husband the whole story. My husband nodded his head knowingly, looked at us both, and then summed up the situation perfectly.

“She didn’t want to eat the banana.”

And Clyde finally understood. If he was allowed to have autonomy—if he was allowed to have his own set of likes and dislikes, preferences and hatreds, then maybe I was, too. Maybe I was something more than his mother—maybe I was actually a person in my own right.

At least I hope that’s what he got from the whole thing. I guess the only way I’ll know for sure is when Parent Week rolls around again next year, and we are once again “invited” to come up and dance. Because I’m pretty sure that a year won’t make any difference whatsoever. I still won’t want to eat the damn banana.