Mama's Whoop-Ass

My mother is smaller than me. I remember thinking how tall she was when I was seven, how I could barely put my arm around her neck when she was standing up. Then I hit the big P, my Dad's genes kicked in, and now I tower over my mother by a good six or seven inches. You'd think this size difference would have made me less afraid of her kicking my ass from here until next year, but it didn't. I still fear the unholy terror one withering look from my Mom can give. Nobody loves you like your momma, but nobody can open a can of whoop ass like your momma, either.
That being said, if I had pulled this stunt when I was sixteen, I would have not been allowed to leave the house until sometime last year:

Instead of coming home after classes last Thursday, the teens took a flight overseas and telephoned their parents when they got to Rome.
The parents of Marc LeBourdais, 17, and Corwin Lagueux, 16, met the boys Wednesday at New York's JFK Airport.

Oh. My. God. Can you imagine meeting your parents after taking an "unannounced" trip to Italy? I can imagine my mother, all 5'2" of her standing straight up, her jaw locked. She would hug me, but mutter through gritted teeth, "I am going to make your life hell until you turn eighteen and get the hell out of my house. Which you will have no choice but to do since you think you can just up and take care of yourself in a foreign country without telling anyone where you went, so surely you can manage an apartment and job on your own."
You'd think any parent would say something like that. But these kids' parents said something entirely different:

"We are happy to announce that our sons have returned safely home," the parents said. "We would like to caution the parents of high school-age children in regard to copycat attempts," the parents said in a statement sent to The Telegraph.... The parents emphasized the boys made their own choice to return home.

What? What kind of parent are you if you have to hide your kid's passport from him because you think he's a flight risk? And then you go all new-agey parent and say it was a kid's "choice" to come back to the States? These kids are juveniles! You tell them to get their stupid asses back to New Hampshire immediately, no choice involved. I shudder to think of the statement my mother would write to a newspaper.

"I am happy to announce my stupid-ass daughter has returned home from whatever locale she just had to visit halfway around the world. I am happy that she is alive, but am about ten seconds away from killing her out of blind rage. If she's dead, I don't have to worry about her taking off unannounced again. She had no choice in the matter of her return. As soon as she collect-called me from a phone booth in the Vatican, I had the State Department trace the call, running-tackle her, and get her a cargo-hold seat on the first military flight out of Europe. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to have her remove the wallpaper from the living room with her teeth."