No matter how old my kids get, they know that Mom is ALWAYS right! How do I know this??
...When half of the Sacramento Sherriff's Department is standing in front of your car, ready to draw their weapons and telling you and your adult daughter to stay in the car and your daughter looks at you and says, "Do I have to mom?"...you know that as MOM, you have the ultimate power!
Let me go back just a bit...
A few years back my oldest daughter, MiMi, and I were enjoying a girls night out. She really needed to use a rest room. We were on a major street in Sacramento when we spotted an am/pm on the left side of the street. I, (being visually challenged and pre-occupied laughing with MiMi), turned left to enter the station, not realizing that there was a raised meridian separating the lanes. Well, the way I looked at it, once I had one set of tires over it, I was committed, so I kicked it into 4-wheel-drive and continued boony crashing over it and into the parking lot of the am/pm.
As luck would have it, this is where the entire Sacramento Sherriff's department goes for their donut breaks! When they observed my clever driving technique, their sharply developed sherriff senses, along with their keen sense of deduction, they concluded that we MUST BE some kind of dangerous, mother/daughter criminal master minds. With coplike swiftness they got down and poised one hand over their guns while keeping their other hands firmly grasped on their donuts and warned us to, "Stay in the car and keep your hands where we can see them!"...
By now I was parked with about 10-15 highly skilled (I can only imagine) marksmen ready to shoot us both. As I said, MiMi really needed to use the restroom, so she looked at me and said, "Mom, do I have to? I really have to go!" To which I replied, "No, of course not honey! They're just being silly!" Which, in my defense, they were!
So, she put her hands down (I thought that was silly too, so I never raised mine), and proceeded to get out of the car, despite all of the yelling, panicked cops telling her to stay right where she was. After all, MOM SAID IT WAS OKAY! Well, now this was really getting out of control, so I had to get involved. I couldn't just let them shoot my oldest child, now could I? I then got out of the car as well. Two cops actually unsnapped their holsters at this point! I was obviously the "kingpin" in their minds and VERY threatening! Is it wrong that I'm just a bit thrilled that armed police officers find me so intimidating??? I told them all to just calm down and finish their donuts while we all had a chat. Boy did they look confused at that point!
I explained that MiMi REALLY had to use the rest room (by now, she was already inside doing just that) and that when I saw the am/pm I simply wanted to turn in, not realizing the divider was there. Backing up after I was halfway over it seemed far more dangerous than just following through. Besides, I pointed out, I had four wheel drive! So I finished crossing the meridian, pulled in and parked.
They seemed to calm down a bit but they also seemed somewhat confused by the fact that it was I, not they, who took control of the situation. I think they were just disappointed that they didn't get to shoot something.
They did eventually "stand down", as they say, and by the time MiMi returned from the rest room they were satisfied that my driving manuever was simply a mistake and not an attempt to run them all down.
We went our own way, but to this day it is a family joke that Mom has the ultimate authority. Even over the law.
Isn't motherhood great???
