Amanda brandishes the rabbit. “One of the kids would totally grab it and be like, Mommy! It’s a bunny! How does it work? Oh, look, it’s a vibrating bunny! Can I take it to school for show and tell? Is it a kid toy? It has beads inside!” She bounces up and down, mimicking kid excitement, then drops abruptly back to adult tones. “I was like, no way we’re doing this at my house.”

Laughter bounces around the circle, and the moms all echo their fervent agreement. And then the stories start to fly.

“I’ve got one for you. My fifteen-year-old, who has gotten very self-sufficient lately and doesn’t usually want anything to do with me, came into the bedroom about a month ago when I was reading in bed, threw himself down on the floor next to the bed and started chatting with me about life, school, and everything. And then after we’ve been talking for a few minutes, he gets this weird look on his face, reaches under the bed, surfaces with my Magic Wand in hand, and says, ‘What’s this?’ And instead of being all cool and saying, ‘Oh, that’s a muscle massager,’ or using it as an opportunity to talk about masturbation and toys, I freak out and yell, ‘Put that down!’ He drops it like a hot potato. And obviously, that was the last mother-son bonding time we’ve had since. I’m still mad at myself.”

Murmurs of sympathy.

“Yeah, so, under the bed? Not the best hiding place.”

“Have to agree with that—my We-Vibe charging cable got mangled in the vacuum. While it was being run under the bed by our cleaning service. I came home to find it on my bed: vibe, mangled cord, apology note.”

“Did they come back? The cleaning crew?”

“Yeah. And I’ve never been able to be home when they have, since. I can’t face them.”

Laughter.

“Have you ever been walked in on?”

A moment of silence, and then a burst of simultaneous starts:

“Oh, my God, I have to tell you—”

“Oh, it was the worst, the worst!”

Amanda’s friend Susie:

“We were doing it in the bathroom because the door locks, except we were so sleep deprived that my wife unlocked the door instead of locking it, and my three-year-old walked in.”

Peals of laughter.

Kiona: “We were in bed in the dark, and I started to get that ‘you’re being watched’ feeling and I realized my four-year-old was standing by the side of the bed. Literally no idea how long he’d been there.”

Groans of dismay.

Jem: “They’re all going to end up in the therapy for all the ways we messed them up anyway, right?”

Whole-hearted agreement.

“What about you, Amanda, any horror stories?”