I remember a time when I was about 12 years old, when my friends and I had spent the day riding our bikes on dirt mounds by our house. By the end of the day, we’d taken several tumbles and were covered in dirt. One of my friends had some fake blood that he’d been planning to use as part of a Halloween costume, and we decided to apply it to our dirty, scraped-up selves. We thought we looked really gruesome—like battle-tested action heroes right out of a Hollywood movie.
Our next idea probably should have gone through a review process, but we decided it would be really funny to see how our moms would react when they saw us all bloodied up. So I opened the door and said in my best woe-is-me voice, “Mom, I fell off my bike.” There I was, waiting for her to scream and come running to me, arms outstretched, sobbing, “Are you OK?” Well, she took one look at me, and without missing a beat, said in the most matter-of-fact voice, “Make sure your bike is OK, and then go get yourself cleaned up.”
It was so disappointing! She’d totally seen through me. I’d been looking for something really extreme and dramatic, and what I got was an unmovable solid rock—called mom.
