Shooting the breeze

I shudder to think of the tales my kids have told about me. Not that I’ve done bad things, mind you, but little kids will rat you out like a mob stoolie about stuff you didn’t even know you did.

I started wondering about the tall tales my offspring have spun about me on a recent Sunday as I was teaching Sunday school to a group of Kindergarten through second-graders. That day’s lesson was on miracles and specifically, how Jesus turned water into wine.

No sooner had the words ‘water to wine’ left my lips than two little hands shot up. They’d heard a word they knew! “My mama drinks wine!” one little girl shouted. “So does my dad!” chimed in a little boy. Want to know the real miracle? That these kid’s parents didn’t hear them.

My church babies always keep me laughing though. As do my kids and ANY kids. There’s no filter on their tiny mouths and you just never know what you’re going to hear.

I clearly remember the first time I knew that my life as a normal adult was over and my life as a parent who MUST WATCH HER MOUTH had started. It was during my first year as a mother with a child in school. I was in the car pickup line to get my 5-year-old from Kindergarten and the teacher met me at the front. She asked me to park and come into her classroom.

Talk about panic! I thought my little girl had gotten hurt or sick or some other ill had befallen her. Not. The. Case. My sweet little blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel was singing the Black-Eyed Peas song “My Humps,” in class. Sigh. And so it begins, I thought. And I was right.

It’s good to get these things out of the way early, I guess, because as she enters these lovely teenage years, I keep thinking back to all the trouble she’s given me and I put on my ‘tough mom’ demeanor and think, “Bring it on, kid.” Until she goes telling on me about stuff. That stuff’s not funny. She was pretty quiet for several years between the “My Humps,” incident and the terrible teens. She’s not so quiet these days.

Church social time has become a time where I find her and fix her with my “crazy-mom-eyes” stare every time I hear her spilling my secrets to friends or family. She has apparently been spending these years storing up little tidbits of anything even remotely embarrassing that has happened to me so she can tell anyone who will listen. Hence why I’m spilling her “My Humps,” story to all of Camp County.

I just want you all to know that I am a model citizen who has never done anything wrong. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Just don’t ask my daughter.

"Shooting the Breeze," is written by Pittsburg Gazette editor Tori Lyle.