Mom hoofed it out of there and I was on her tail. But when we got to the car, she went nuts and started shrieking at me! Man, she was loud enough for the entire school to hear. I ducked low in the passenger seat, saying, “Yeah, well, could you start the car, please? Could we maybe talk about this at home?”

But no. We sat right there while she launched into a list of things I can never do again. An extreme list, I might add. Such as watch TV, listen to music, play Nintendo, breathe, or blow my nose. Then a list of chores I’m going to have to do: carry out the trash, clean the garage, vacuum.

Then she started in on how ashamed she was, and disappointed in me, blah, blah. I never got a chance to say a word.

As she finally started the car and we headed out of the parking lot, she told me, “You can just forget about going anywhere, and I mean anywhere, for the next…well, I haven’t decided how long. Your father and I will have to discuss your punishment, but I assure you, young man, you can expect to be grounded for a good long time.”

I slid further down in the passenger seat to glare out the window, thinking, Great, man, just great. Ruby’s gonna go ballistic if I miss her sister’s shindig.

Sarah

When Lilly (my mother’s assistant) told my mother that the principal was on the phone, Mom instantaneously freaked, thinking there’d been a disaster, an earthquake, a shooting. She said she pictured spattered blood, me dying, crying out for her. So when Mr. Principal told her that I’d been caught in a cheating ring, my mother was relieved. She cheerfully told him she’d be right there.

But in the car, said my mother, she started thinking about cheating, and she got so depressed that by the time she got to school, she was practically in tears, imagining herself as an eighth grader (like me), and thinking about how little faith she’d have to have in her own abilities, and how low her self-esteem would have to be, to make her cheat. (She “shared” all this with me on the drive home.)

There was no point in telling her that my getting in trouble was not about her as an eighth grader—because in my mother’s mind everything is about her. So as she drove, I sat back and dutifully listened to her lengthy monologue about how times have changed. How she recognizes that the pressures to succeed are much tougher for my generation than they were for hers.

And that the newly blurred line
between right——– and wrong
must——————————
———- be———————–
——————————– hard
to———————————–
——————navigate.——–

But mostly my mother discussed how difficult it is

to be
a responsible
single
parent
in these,
quote,
morally
ambiguous,
unquote,
times.