On the porch, seven men spread out in a line, all wearing black bulletproof vests, lettered like my pants (though theirs say FBI, not WVHS, of course), guns pointed in that way you see on television procedurals. Two-handed grips. Serious faces.

This must be some sort of joke, I think.

My mother’s fiftieth birthday is coming up, though she has so far refused to acknowledge it, partly because according to IMDB and Wikipedia, she’s only forty-five. The only reasonable explanation for the scene in front of me that I can conjure up on such short notice is this: It’s a gag. These men are strippers. As soon as my mom makes her grand entrance, cheesy techno music will start blaring and they’ll all do that one-piece tear-off. A choreographed move down the line, like Rockettes. Aunt Candy, my mother’s best friend, is exactly the sort of person who would think sending FBI strippers to your door at 6:30 a.m. is hilarious. When she had a colonoscopy last spring, she blew up the black-and-white picture of her poop-flecked insides, had it expensively framed, and sent it to us as a Christmas present with a card that said, Now you know me inside and out. My mom hung the photo in the guesthouse bathroom, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was a modern art masterpiece and not what it really is: proof that Aunt Candy is literally full of crap.

“Can I help you?” I ask, smiling despite the hour. Because it’s still funny, this before-moment, when I think that I’ll get to see these semi-handsome muscley men undress and dance. When I still believe they’re carrying toy guns and not semiautomatic assault rifles. When my default was friendly, not defensive.

“We’re here for Ms. Joy Fields,” they say, and at the exact same minute, I hear my mom exclaim in a panic: “You weren’t supposed to answer the door.”

My mother, Joy Fields—who you probably already know as Missy, the surrogate for the two gay dads on the long-running aughts CBS sitcom My Dad, My Pops, and Me, or more recently as the queen in Blood Moon, the royal vampire show on the CW—is an actress, and therefore, I don’t react when I hear her nervous voice behind me. She’s won six People’s Choice Awards, she can weep on command, and sometimes she speaks with a British accent just for fun.

Which is to say, my mother can be a little dramatic.

Then again, as the world will learn mere minutes from now, I can be a little oblivious.

“What’s going on?” I ask.