Help.

Baby J has a new tactic. When I catch him doing something he shouldn't, like climbing on a chair by the counter, unwrapping a pack of gum and filling his mouth with it, I'll ask,

"What are you doing?"

It's a stupid question, really. I know what he's doing. I'm not that dumb. Those two year olds can't put nothing over on me. Ha! He plays dumb, even though I suspect he takes after me and is very, very smart.

"I don't know, Mo-om."

It's more or less true. He knows he's not doing something specifically right, but he doesn't know exactly what it is.

I need to quit asking. I used to hate it when my parents would ask me about something, when they knew the truth, trying to catch me in a lie and compound the mountain of trouble I was in. I was a pretty good kid, but what was I supposed to do?

"Did you have fun last night? What did y'all do?"

"We went to a wholesome movie, ate popcorn and spent the night at [insert name of approved female friend here]'s house."

Then they would ask a bunch more questions, forcing me to dig an ever deeper hole, before I broke down in tears and confessed the truth. It was more than a little bit bully-ish, because I was a pretty easy target. My sister, on the other hand, had b*lls of steel. What was I supposed to answer?

"Last night? Oh, yeah, that was fun. A bunch of us spent the night at [insert name of guy whose dad worked in Washington DC but kept an empty house here], watched a pretty good Disney movie and hung out. There was a six pack of beer involved, but there were about ten of us there and I didn't have more than a sip, because frankly, I don't like beer and I'm ok with that. I think a couple of people fooled around but, as you can imagine, I wasn't one of them, on account of being the latest bloomer ever. Boys freak me out, but they're ok when you're just watching a Disney movie and eating pizza. I might have had an even better time, but I was scared I'd get caught. And here we are."

I did get caught, of course, when one of my friend's dads saw us at the country club for lunch with my Grandmother and told my dad all about it, in front of his whole family and everybody else we knew. My mom was out of town. As you can imagine, this was a fine moment for my dad. He was really happy and proud. Not.

I got grounded, of course. In my world, grounding wasn't that big of a deal. It saved me from having to pretend I wanted to go to parties that were way out of my league. It actually gave me some street cred, or so I liked to think.

"Oh," I would roll my eyes,"I would so be at that kegger but I'm,like, way grounded...yeah...spent the night at some guy's house...with beer. My parents are so harsh."

I conveniently left out the part about watching the Disney movie and not drinking the beer. See, Dad? Teenagers lie, to everyone. I don't think my peers fell for it either, but I had to try.

Unlike my own parents, I plan to be the Best Parent Ever. If I know my kid did something, I'm jusy going to tell them. When parents say you'll get in more trouble if you lie...that's a lie. How much more trouble can you be in? If you lie, it's just more of a hassle for them. I like to avoid hassle at all costs. I've built my life around avoiding hassle (well, except for the fact that I more or less deliberately had all these kids). I'm going to skip the lying portion of the conversation and move in for the bust. Unless I really don't know the truth. Then I might just ignore it completely, because kids have to get away with stuff sometimes, right? Just don't tell them I said so.

Namasté, y'all!