The next phase of motherhood

Yesterday, I became the mother of a teenaged girl.

How in the world did that happen so fast?!?

Sometimes, I don't feel old enough to have a thirteen-year-old daughter. I mean, it definitely doesn't feel like my husband and I have been together for sixteen years, but I've got the living proof of that sleeping down the hall. She was very quick to remind me, too, that she'll be starting high school in eighteen months.

I did not need that reminder.

My own mother is currently visiting, helping me out a little as I'm healing from my surgery, getting to spend some time with my kids, and so on. My relationship with my daughter amuses her to no end. She's told me more than once I've got a mini-me on my hands, which...oh my god, I really hope not. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she's smarter and more secure than I ever was so she doesn't make the same stupid mistakes I did.

Just different ones.

It was funny the other day, though, when my daughter and I got to talking about embarrassing mothers. I had said something to her in the car in front of her BFF, and when she protested, I proceeded to inform her that there was absolutely no way I would ever be as bad as my mother had been to me. Mine reveled in embarrassing me as much as she could, so I told my daughter the worst story about it.

It's the story of my prom night, senior year. I was going with a junior named Mike, who I had the hugest crush on. He was a bad boy, this honors student's big weakness, and I do mean bad. When we met during the spring play (he was playing my father, don't even get me started on how warped that all was), he was on probation for breaking into the school and trying to steal something from his history teacher's desk. These were details I didn't share with my mother, of course, but being my mother, she found out anyway.

The night of prom, Mike showed up at my house to pick me up. Mom hustled him in so we could take pictures, and as she's about to take the first one, the camera to her eye, she said, "So, Mike, how's your probation officer?"

She then took the picture without waiting for an answer.

I still have it. In it, Mike looks like someone's just stuck a huge spider down the front of his pants and he's been ordered not to move in case it scares the thing and it bites. Me, I've got the most nervous smile on my face, my eyes huge with shock.

I got us out of there as fast as possible, but when we got to the car, Mike laid into me, furious that I'd told her. I argued back that I hadn't said a word, but he didn't believe me.

Needless to say, prom did not go well.

Anyway, my daughter barely registered much of that story. She doesn't even care that her grandmother embarrassed me enough to ruin prom. No, she got hung up on the exposition of the story, the detail where she discovered her mother used to go out with bad boys.

I think I opened her eyes a little bit with that one, lol.

And I'm hoping it shows her that Mom has been around the block enough so that she can't get away with anything without me finding out. ;)