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It was during the early Victorian era that people first began to get really paranoid about being buried alive, which, considering all of the other ridiculous ways there were to die back then, was actually kind of silly (in the days before Neosporin, cutting yourself shaving could be a death sentence). Who knows why this was so: maybe Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” was the “Snakes on a Plane” of its day, a bit of pop culture that crept into the public consciousness and created an irrational fear where none had existed before. Or maybe undertakers were just really lazy back then, and it wasn’t such an irrational fear after all. In any case, the Victorian version of Billy Mays did a brisk job selling things like coffin bells and underground speaking tubes, and writers like Poe turned a quick buck writing stories with names like, you guessed it, “The Premature Burial.”

Still, as time has passed, this fear had receded to the back of our consciousness—while we still might occasionally remark on it (“Man, that would suck”), we don’t obsess over it like we once did. Which is a good thing. Or, at least, that’s what I thought, until I had my son, Clyde. Because having Clyde around has got me started thinking that I should add a codicil to my will that calls for coffin bells, speaking tubes, and maybe even being buried with 3G. Because Clyde clearly has a problem differentiating between “dead” and “alive.”

I found this out the hard way (well, not the really hard way—that would be by being buried alive) when Clyde called me at work to tell me the sad, sad news that his new pet lizard had, unfortunately, expired. Passed on. Crossed over. Slipped the mortal coil. Or, as Clyde put it, was “not breathing. Not even a little.”

Due to the fact that thus far in his life Clyde has been spectacularly unlucky in pets (although, obviously, not quite as unlucky as the pets themselves), I already knew the routine: offer my sympathy, promise pizza for the evening, and go home and dispose of the evidence before Clyde returned from school. Which I did. And yet, when I got to the third part of the plan I met a minor snag: the lizard, in the words of Monty Python, was “not dead yet.” In fact, it was feeling rather spry, so spry that when I picked it up to send it to its final reward, it turned and looked at me.

Not in an aggressive way. Not in a threatening way. But still: how aggressive or threatening does a lizard have to be when it is in your hand, supposedly dead, and then it turns to look at you? If lizards could have heart attacks I’m sure this one would have died all over again from the shock of being screamed at and then flung back into its cage. As it was I’m sure that I took a few years off of its (probably already short) life. That’s only fair, though: it did the same to me.

Since I didn’t want Clyde to spend the rest of his day moping around about his supposedly “dead” lizard, after I had recovered somewhat from my shock I texted him to let him know the happy news. His reply? “Can we still get pizza?”

Forget the part about speaking tubes in my will: I’m putting something in there about how no one is getting any pizza at my wake until at least three doctors have confirmed that I am well and truly dead. Hopefully, that will do the trick, but, just to be on the safe side side, I think I’ll add an extra clause about how, under no circumstances, is anyone allowed to flush me.

Sometimes I think that the greatest benefit of having children is having the opportunity to see the world through completely different eyes. Of course, sometimes this benefit is not so easy to recognize. For instance, it’s hard for me to see the advantage of seeing the world as one massive urinal, but, apparently, that is how it appears to some children—the male ones, especially. (“It was just quicker to go outside,” they always say, an argument I might actually be tempted to believe if it wasn’t for the fact that there have been times when they stood inside the house so that they could pee out the window. And don’t give me that, “Oh,you know you would do it, too, if you could,” because no, I wouldn’t.)

I also don’t understand the teenage appeal of seeing the world as one great big place to lose your car keys, homework, permission slips, cell phones, and shoes in over and over again. While I, too, tend to see the world as a delightfully chaotic place, I also enjoy having my own small corner of it somewhat tamed into order. But again, that’s just me.

But still, for all the times I am completely confounded by the way these people who live in my house see the world, there are times when their take on things is so refreshingly different that I realize that I am the one who has been deluded all along. Take, for example, my son Clyde’s reaction to hearing the old “Superman” radio show intro for the first time.

“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”

The first time he heard that he cocked his head, thought about it for a minute, and then asked, “Why were they so excited when they thought it was a bird?”

That’s very good question, and one that I had simply never considered before. (For that matter, why were they so excited when they thought it was a plane?) And the thing is, it wasn’t just because Clyde still sees things through “young” eyes that he caught on to the incongruity: I must have listened to that intro a thousand times in my own youth, and never once did that thought occur to me.

Then there was “Les Miserables.” After watching it with us on Christmas Day, Clyde was thoughtful. “Did you like it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. I thought that when they died at the end they were going to get to go to heaven.”

“They did,” I said, remembering what seemed like the entire cast climbing up the monumental barricade at the end. Clyde, however, was not convinced. “That wasn’t heaven,” he said with disbelief. “That was France.”

At this point I feel I must interject that Clyde was not disparaging France. He’s been to France. He likes France. But, apparently, when it comes to Eternal Paradise, he sets the bar a little bit higher. As well he should.

Maybe that’s the biggest advantage to living with people who see the world through fresh eyes: they tend to have much higher (albeit often much more unrealistic) expectations about everything. Which is a good thing: it’s nice sometimes to be forced to climb up out of our own morass of adult cynicism and low expectations and see the world that way, too. A world where things are fair (or at least try to be), a world where people save their excitement for things that are actually exciting, and a world where, when you die, your Eternal Reward is more than just more of the same.

And of course, let’s not forget a world where you can pee anywhere you like, anytime. Even out a window.

I have always hated the idea of the “backseat driver,” and therefore have always done my best to avoid becoming one myself. In a way it’s been easy: since I didn’t get my own driver’s license until relatively late in life (I was nearly thirty) I have always had the sneaking suspicion that everybody drives better than me, and therefore it would be be ridiculous for me of all people to try and critique or improve someone else’s driving. That’s not to say I still don’t do my share of complaining, but instead of being a backseat driver, I am a backseat navigator. When I am a passenger the words most frequently out of my mouth are not “Slow down!” or even “Look out!” but rather, “Where in the hell are you going?” Which, I know, isn’t much better, but still: I believe that it is a difference nonetheless.

Or, at least, it was. Then my daughter turned sixteen and started driving, and those subtle distinctions suddenly went right out the window, along with all of beloved self-restraint and complacence. Because once I had a teenage driver of my own in the family I immediately turned into the world’s biggest cliché of a backseat driver, complete with screams, gasps, groans, and other unhelpful (and probably very annoying) noises of despair.

I can’t help it. Really. Even though every time I get in the car with her I tell myself that this time I am going to zip my lips, the next thing I know we are racing up to a stop sign, and she is looking to the left but there’s a car coming from the right, and it’s a two-way stop but maybe she thinks that it’s a four-way and she doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all, and oh my god, she’s going to drive right in front of them and the next thing I know “STOP! STOP! STOP!” is coming out of my mouth and I’m stomping on the my imaginary brake pedal. And she is looking over at me with complete disdain and saying “I really hate it when you do that.”

But at least she is saying it while we are stopped.

I am happy to say that I am still not this way with other people—like my husband, for example, who does most of the driving when we are in a car together. But then again, I didn’t watch him grow up. I didn’t watch him do things like get into a toy car at age three, immediately run into a tree and then attempt to solve the problem not by backing up and going around the tree, but rather by hitting the gas even harder. This car, by the way, was not a toy Hummer, and the tree in question was no sapling. The result was that the car attempted to climb the tree, at which point Clementine gave it even more gas until the whole thing flipped over. And then when everyone was pulled out, dusted off, and the car was righted, she got in and tried to do it again.

Her cousin, by the way, who was sitting in the passenger seat the whole time, and who voluntarily got back into that same passenger seat again after we had pulled him from the wreckage, was admirably mum during this whole affair. Not even a peep of backseat driving from him, even though the car they were driving was actually his. Perhaps I should learn to take a leaf from his book, and sit stoically through all of Clementine’s attempts to commit vehicular manslaughter on my person.

Of course, come to think of it, he could have just been quiet because he was terrified. Well, that method will work too, I guess.

It is eleven o’clock on a weeknight when my son, Clyde, bursts into my bedroom with distressing news.

“The milk has gone bad!” he shouts.

Although this really is distressing news (What? I just bought that milk), the way he tells it, with such obvious excitement and relish, is like an old-time newspaper boy announcing some juicy headline tragedy. I half expect him to follow up his statement with, “Read all about it!”

Or maybe that’s just because it’s eleven o’clock on a weeknight, and I am sound asleep when he decides to share this piece of breaking news.

“Okay,” I mumble. “I’ll get some more tomorrow.”

“But this milk is really bad,” he says. “Smell it.” And then he sticks the entire gallon under my nose.

A few years back one of the neighborhood skunks let go right outside my open bedroom window: the smell was so bad that to get back to sleep I had to shove two fingers full of Campho-Phenique up my nose. (This was a trick I remembered seeing in Silence of the Lambs, although in the movie I think they used Vick’s Vapor Rub, which I didn’t own. I wasn’t quite sure on the details, and, at three am, I wasn’t about to search IMDb.)

That was, by far, the worst thing I have ever smelled. So, yes, I realize that it could have been much worse—still: neither one is a very pleasant way to wake up. And, unlike the skunk, I could yell at Clyde.

“Get that AWAY from me and go to bed. Now!”

“Fine,” he said, obviously upset that his big news had not been met with a more receptive audience. “I just thought you’d want to know.” And then he turned away, the picture of rejection. He looked like the apostle who had just run through town on Easter morning calling, “Have you heard the Good News!” only to be told in no uncertain terms to “Shut it, you. We like to sleep in on Sundays.” And instead of running after him and comforting him, I muttered “good riddance” under my breath and went back to sleep.

But, wait, you’re probably saying. He was just trying to save you from pouring that nasty milk on your cereal in the morning. He was just thinking of you. And you turned him away.

Yeah, well, that’s a nice thought and all, but past experience doesn’t tend to support it. After all: was he trying to save me when he came into my room at midnight to announce he had just beaten Sonic 3? Was he trying to save me when he stood by my bedside like a spooky statue at two am, waiting for me to stir so he could ask, “Can we go to Martanne’s in the morning?” No, he was not. He was just operating under the usual assumption, that since I Am Mom, I am Always On Call.

Or maybe he thinks there are two Moms, the daytime one and the nighttime one, and that when he wakes me up in the middle of the night he is only accessing the night shift. But if that was the case then surely he would have noticed that the nighttime Mom is much, much grumpier than the daytime one. Of course, that might only serve to reinforce the delusion. After all, wouldn’t it make sense that the nighttime position required an employee of lesser qualities? And “lesser qualities” certainly describes me perfectly when I am unwillingly awoken from a sound sleep.

Especially when the reason for my awakening is a gallon of expired milk held directly under my nose.

I used to worry that my house seemed to attract the strangest sort of thieves: dark, shadowy creatures that would creep into my house in the dead of night, only to steal objects that, by all rights, should be completely worthless to anyone but their owners.

Completed homework assignments.

The second page of three pages of sheet music.

A single shoe.

And then I figured it out. While it was true that all of those objects were seemingly unrelated, (as well as being almost completely valueless), they did, in fact, have one very important thing in common: they were all intensely personal. And then I realized what was really going on: whoever was breaking into my house and stealing those things was using them to cast dark spells of tragedy and woe upon their victims, spells such as, “You will now be dooooomed to fail your chemistry test,” or “With this stolen shoe I curse you with perpetual tardiness!” This “dark spell” theory was particularly compelling since the objects that were stolen were only ever stolen when their absence would cause the most suffering: the completed homework, for instance, never disappeared from the backpack the night before it was due, but rather waited to go missing until everyone else was already in the car and waiting for the homework’s owner to make their appearance. (Of course, some would argue that the homework could have, in fact, actually gone missing the night before—that until its owner happened to open the backpack to look for it, the homework was neither lost nor found. Of course, since the moment of discovery never once happened until the owner was already ten minutes late for school, that’s a mystery that will have to remain unsolved.)

For a long time those events didn’t really bother me; sure, there was a dark wizard (or three) creeping about my house at night, but at least he (they) weren’t targeting me. Not really. And then, one day, they started taking things that—while still being essentially valueless to any but their owner—actually did have some kind of monetary value. Which meant that they were now taking things that I had to pay to replace. Suddenly, having dark wizards skulking about the place at night didn’t seem all that benign.

Take, for example, the time they stole the power cord to my daughter’s computer. One day I noticed her making frequent trips to my office to “borrow” my cord, and when I asked her about it she replied that someone had stolen her power cord. (Strangely enough they had left the computer itself alone.)

This was a new (and distressing) twist: only the darkest and most clever of wizards would be able to creep into a room at night and make off with the power cord of a Tumblr addict. What was worse, though, was when we discovered, upon closer inspection, that this particular thief was not only evil, but also very clumsy; he had dropped the power cord less than a foot away from where he had stolen it, and then—probably because he was so embarrassed at his clumsiness—kicked some dirty clothes over the top of it to hide his black deed.

At this point I don’t know which is worse: having a clutch of dark wizards creeping into our house at night, or having a clutch of clumsy dark wizards stumbling about. I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to go with the clumsier of the two being the worst: after all, one day they might be clumsy enough to accidentally turn their dark magic on me and my things.

And that really would be tragic.

The other day I was in the cafe at Bookmans watching a two year-old have a meltdown. (First, just let me say how much I don’t mind it when other people’s children throw a fit. It doesn’t matter how piercing the scream, how nasal the whine, how violently they kick the back of my seat: if it is not my child, then the disruption doesn’t bother me in the least. Really: I’ve even stayed sanguine after being vomited on by other people’s children, because at least I know—unlike the parents—that this will almost certainly be the only time I will be puked on all day. So yeah, trust me: when I was watching this child have her temper tantrum it was not with annoyance, or even self-righteousness, but rather with a happy little voice buzzing in my brain that said, over and over, “That’s not me, that’s not me, that’s not me…)

And then, of course, her parents went and said something to the child that completely ruined my happy little buzz: “I can’t wait until you’re old enough to just tell us what you want.” Because that statement reminded me that my children are now at that magic age when they are completely capable of telling me what they want, and have been for some time, and yet, when it comes to understanding them, I would gladly trade an inarticulate toddler for a (semi) articulate teenager any day of the week.

For one thing, the things a toddler want actually make sense. In fact, they are remarkably similar to the things I want as well. Think about it: here’s what a magic “toddler translator” would reveal to us.

“I want a cookie!” their shrieks would say. (Me, too!)

` “I want to be carried!” (As do I!)

“I want to be made happy by being given something that in all likelihood doesn’t even exist!” (Same here!)

See? Toddlers make sense. It doesn’t matter that they don’t have the words to tell you what they want, because at least the things they want are normal human desires. Teenagers, on the other hand, want things that would require a whole other verb tense just to explain. Things like, “I want you to go away/come here/leave me alone.” Or, “I want you to be concerned/leave me alone/you never loved me/go away/where are you when I need you/leave me alone.” What?

And then, of course, there are the requests that they phrase in normal everyday English, and yet still don’t make sense. Requests like: “But why can’t I hitchhike to California this weekend? It’s my life.” And “It’s none of your business where I spent last night. Can I have some money? Because I’m going back tonight, that’s why.”

And let’s not forget that when a toddler doesn’t hear the answer they want, they just scream. A teenager actually tries to debate their way into a yes. (I would rather hear that piercing shriek of righteous indignation than have to endure arguments on how useless algebra is and how seat belts actually kill more people than they save. And please, spare me for the rest of my life from hearing any more about the Many Wonderful Uses of Hemp.)

I think, though, that the single greatest difference between dealing with a toddler and a teenager is that, at least with a toddler you believe (as the parents at Bookmans clearly did) that one day things will surely get better. With teenagers, it’s all you can to do to hold on to the belief that things will, maybe, possibly, hopefully, not get any worse.

And even that is a tough sell most of the time.

When I was in college, a friend of mine owned both a VCR and a movie to play in that VCR. I know that these days, when you can watch a movie on your phone, that isn’t such a big deal, but back then it was. Or at least it was in my circle of friends: we were so broke that we used to fantasize about one day being rich enough to afford the name brand mac and cheese. But I digress. He owned an actual movie. And that movie was Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

Now, Monty Python’s Holy Grail is a funny movie. A hysterical movie, even. And one that, yes, can be viewed over and over again and still be entertaining. However, even the great Monty Python has its limits, and after a solid semester of watching The Holy Grail night after night I was done. More than done. Not only could I not watch The Holy Grail anymore, I couldn’t watch Life of Brian or The Meaning of Life. I could barely even watch Time Bandits, and that was just Terry Gilliam.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that, yes indeed, it is, in fact, possible to get too much of a good thing—or at least that was the point for me. (The point for you might have been: get wealthier friends). However, as I said, that was the point for me, and it was a point I managed to remember for many years. Right up until the very moment, about two years ago, when I didn’t remember it anymore. Which explains how it came to be that I let my kids ruin The Simpsons for me.

Don’t get me wrong. The Simpsons is a great show—probably one of the best shows on television. It’s clever, biting, and quite often really, really funny. And, just like The Holy Grail, I can’t stand to watch it anymore. I can barely even bring myself to read Matt Groenig’s “Life in Hell.” And why? Because my kids ruined it for me.

The thing is, they were clever about it—or at least cleverer than me. If they had simply played episode after episode of The Simpsons I would have had sense enough to stop them before it was too late. They didn’t ever watch The Simpsons, though. No, they were sneakier than that. What they did was watch Family Guy, American Dad, Futurama, The Cleveland Show, South Park and anything and everything on Adult Swim; and they watched these shows over and over and over again, until even the guys at Netflix must have been impressed by their single-minded determination to view cartoons 24/7. (Or maybe appalled. Yeah, I’m going to go with appalled.)

I don’t know why I find this to be so surprising: when they were younger they were the same way with the Land Before Time series. They watched those movies so often that the rewind button wore out on our VCR. (To this day I think that if I ever run into the person who voiced Sara the Triceratops—say in line at Starbucks, or something—I will probably hit them. Hard.)

Who knows: maybe I’m the one who is missing out on something. Maybe, for them, watching the same shows (and listening to those same voices) over and over again is their version of a koan. Maybe instead of “the sound of one hand clapping,” it’s “the sound of Peter Griffith’s voice.” Maybe, by seeing the same thing again and again, they are getting beneath the surface of reality and seeing the light that connects us all. Maybe this is actually the next step in our evolutionary process—from Primitive Man to Video Man, and maybe I’m just an evolutionary holdout, like the appendix, unnecessary and easily irritated.

Or maybe they really are just trying to drive me crazy.

I once read that the definition of a boy is “noise with dirt on it.” I would have to say that this definition seems remarkably apt—at least until they hit puberty, and then it just needs to be expanded a little so that it also includes the word, “smelly.” Actually, come to think of it, after they hit puberty you could probably leave out the noise and dirt part entirely, and just define boys as “a portable smell.”

I should have seen this coming when my son came home the first week of sixth grade and announced, “They told all of us we have to buy deodorant. Now.” As the mother of the accused, I found this blanket statement given out to an entire class to be rather offensive. (Although, I suppose, not as offensive as it would have been if it had been given out to my child and my child alone.) And I was a little bit worried that it might have some kind of damaging effect on the development of my boy’s self-esteem—after all, I’m not sure how I would take it as an adult if someone told me I needed to go buy some deodorant—right now. What would the effect of a statement like have on the tender psyche of a growing adolescent?

As it turns out: none. In fact, it seems that my concerns about Clyde’s burgeoning ego were entirely misplaced. When the “smell” eventually arrived (as Clyde’s teachers had correctly foretold it soon would), he wasn’t chagrined at all to be told about it—on the contrary, he positively reveled in it. Case in point: the other day he came home from school and took off his shoes; this immediately killed all of the nearest houseplants and sent the cat into a fit of retching. “For the love of all things holy,” we admonished him. “Go take a shower. You stink.”

Clyde, far from taking offense at this greeting, actually stood up a little bit taller. “Really?” he said. “I smell that bad? Huh: I guess that guy on the bus wasn’t kidding.”

We tried to explain to him that having complete strangers tell you how bad you smell wasn’t something to be proud of, but he never even got close to understanding what we were talking about. After a while, just to shut us up he started nodding in agreement, but we could tell by the sparkle in his eyes how proud he still was. I smell bad! Really bad! So bad that people noticed! we could clearly see him thinking.

Which is why, I think, the deodorant lecture fell on such deaf ears. I know now that it was a cry for help from the adults trapped in a closed room with up to thirty adolescents, but in order for it to work they would have needed to have a room full of adolescents who were embarrassed about how badly they smelled—not proud of it. And besides, even if the lecture had worked there is no deodorant in the world that would help with this kind of funk—unless, perhaps, it was a special kind of deodorant that was meant to be applied to the feet. (I think they actually have that type of deodorant—it’s called “clean socks.”)

No: the truth is that the only real help for this kind of funk is a good healthy dose of shame. The kind of shame that should have been accomplished by the lecture the students were given at the beginning of the year, but, alas, apparently was not.

Perhaps next year they can start off by giving the deodorant lecture to the parents. That probably won’t help with the smell any time soon, but it might help with the shame. I know that, personally, I’m ashamed just thinking about it.

When I was a child, my favorite TV shows were always the detective dramas: Hart to Hart, Quincy, The Rockford Files—I loved them all. Even now, as an adult, detective shows are always my first choice when it comes to mindless TV watching; in fact, the last time I was in the hospital the nurses eventually had to come in and tell me that it was time to turn off the TV and go to sleep. “But Law and Order is on,” I protested. “Law and Order is always on,” they replied. “Now go to sleep.”

You might think then, given my deep and abiding love for mysteries, that I would have become a detective myself, but no: I decided to opt for a profession that not only gave me the chance to solve an unlimited number of mysteries, but also didn’t involve all of that tedious paperwork and rules. That’s right: I decided to become a mother instead.

Being a mother is very much like being a detective. First there is that whole disagreeable business of having to figure out not only when, but how you are being lied to. (For some reason it is not enough to merely catch the liar in the middle of the lie—apparently, the rules are written so that in order to receive full credit you must also be able to demonstrate how you knew that you were being lied to. This is known as the “show your work” rule of lie detection, and involves strategies such as placing a crisp twenty dollar bill inside a violin case in order to prove that, yes, in fact, you do know for sure that the violin hasn’t been practiced all week.)

Then there are the missing person’s cases. Of course, unlike TV detectives, you’re usually not searching for an actual person (although sometimes you are), but rather a vital and missing piece of information. Still, just like a TV detective, the first thing you must determine is whether or not the person (information) is missing because it doesn’t want to be found, or simply because it has lost its way. For example: in the case of a grade report, the object in question might not want to be found. On the other hand, a piece of paper asking that everyone in class show up with a packet of frozen squid the next morning probably just went astray. (Okay, maybe not frozen squid—maybe a box of dry erase markers. The point is, however, that both items are equally difficult to obtain at six in the morning, which is when you will be receiving said paper—unless, of course you did your detective style sleuthing the night before.)

Before I had kids, I thought that the only reason I would ever be snooping through their drawers or listening in on their phone calls was because I was trying to catch them up to no good. Running a drug cartel from their closet, say, or passing nuclear secrets to the North Koreans, perhaps. Now, however, I realize that the main reason mothers snoop is to find out the good stuff. “Your child has been invited to an awards banquet tomorrow,” for instance, is a harder piece of information to obtain than “Your child needs to be in court six weeks from today.” They say that bad news is halfway around the world before good news even has a chance to put its shoes on, but I would update that to “Bad news knocks on your front door with a warrant, while good news lied hidden in a backpack beneath a moldy sandwich and last year’s art project.”

Luckily for me (and thanks to TV) I spent my formative years training with the world’s best detectives before I ever took this job. Thanks for everything, Scooby-Doo.

I remember when my kids were smaller they always wanted me to buy single-serving sizes of everything. Single serve peanut butter. Single serve ranch dressing. Single serve cheese and cracker boxes. Their argument was that it would make things easier for me when it came time to pack their lunches in the morning—instead of me rushing around trying to make sandwiches and whatnot, they could just pack their lunches themselves! My counter argument was that if they were that interested in making things easier for me, then they could pack their own lunches—with sandwiches and whatnot—the night before. I would even show them where the box of whatnots were kept.

I think I also tossed in some Mom Guilt arguments about how single serve containers are bad for the environment, and maybe even made a few cracks about how three baby polar bears slip under the ice and drown every time a Lunchable is opened, but that was more for the fun of making them feel miserable than an actual argument. No, the real reason I was against the pre-packaged, single-serving sized lunches was simply that I was just way too cheap to ever spend four dollars on six little tubs of ranch dressing. Of course, that argument was never going to be as compelling as the baby polar bear argument; especially around Christmas time when Coke would start showing all of those cutesy polar bear commercials, and stuffed baby polar bears (the plush kind—not the real ones) became all the rage.

In the end, it didn’t really matter which argument I choose—as things usually went when they were that young, I won that argument simply because I was the one who did the shopping. Of course, I’m sure that it also didn’t hurt when I pointed out that I didn’t know what kind of Brady Bunch delusion they were living under, but the only time I ever packed them a lunch for school was when we had leftover pizza from the night before. All other times I just signed them up for a school lunch, under the theory that if they were going to complain about/waste/ignore their lunch, than I would rather someone other than me me put the effort into preparing it.

And so that was the end of that. Or, at least, that’s what I thought. What I didn’t realize when I won the single serve argument nearly a decade ago was that asking me to buy them Lunchables was only the opening salvo in that particular war; if anything, the Lunchables argument was a targeting round, designed to get me to show my position so that they could regroup and come up with a better strategy. Which now, nearly ten years later, they have.

Here’s the thing about single serve: just like anything can be disposable, anything can be made into a single serving. That five pound tube of ground beef you bought for this weekend’s barbeque? Take enough hamburger out of it for one patty, fry it up on the stove, and leave the rest of the meat sitting on the counter overnight and voila! Single serve ground beef.

The same goes for the bag of buns: take one out, leave the bag open, and, like magic, the next morning you have a bag of single serve hamburger buns. (Or rather had.)

These days, instead of making the argument that their “single-serve” lifestyle causes baby polar bears to slip under the ice, I instead make the argument that it causes my bank account to slip under. Unfortunately, however, since baby polar bears are still much cuter than my wallet, that argument is as unsuccessful now as it was when they were little.

And just like that, suddenly Lunchables are starting to look like a pretty good option.

Well played, children. Well played.