And now from our men's auxiliary group...

One night my sons came home from having dinner out with Daddy -- a treat! -- and could hardly wait to tell me the news. "Mommy! Guess what? Daddy took us to a bar!"

After I picked myself up off the floor, my husband sheepishly explained. He had taken them out to eat at an inexpensive Mexican restaurant, not realizing that the place didn't take credit cards. Of course they didn't take checks, either, and he didn't have enough cash on him to cover the bill. He asked somewhat frantically if there was an ATM anywhere nearby, and they told him he could find one across the street at, of course, the bar.

Fortunately, the machine was right at the entrance, so my kids couldn't see or hear anything anyway. But they were enchanted at the idea of having been in a real live bar. And I felt terrific at the thought of them telling all their friends just that.

Damn it, children should learn profanity the old-fashioned way -- from their parents!

So my daughter came home tonight from her public-schooled neighbor's house. She casually flipped me the bird and said, "This isn't a 'bad word', is it, mom? Because my friend said it is -- that can't be right!" I explained to her that it is a very vulgar gesture, one that only the lowest of low-lifes use...people who don't know how to use words to express themselves with class and respect. Blah blah blah...

Well, my daughter had apparently been quite embarrassed not to have had this bit of information under her belt, particularly because she tried to actually do the gesture that had been described by her friend -- "You mean THIS?" At that point, her friend's big sister came out of the house and told my kid off, and later her mom called me to tell me my daughter had "flipped the bird" at her daughter. I called back and explained that my daughter had actually never heard of this prior to HER daughter telling her about it...sigh.

The funny part was my daughter saying, in an accusatory tone to me, "Mommy, you should have taught me this. You homeschool me. I didn't know this was a bad word."

I guess I have to add curse words to my curriculum.

Helpful tips from Real Bad Mommies!

I read about a brilliant Real Bad Mommy in some humor column years ago -- can't remember where. This mom had a couple of kids who were too young to keep track of time in terms of the date and the day of the week and all that, so whenever the kids wanted to do something that the mom didn't want them to, she wouldn't tell them no or argue with them. Instead, she'd say that they could do it on Tuesday. The kids would dance around and sing, "We get to go swimming on Tuesday!" And of course by the time Tuesday rolled around, they'd forgotten all about it. Not that they'd know it was Tuesday anyway. I mean, it's not like Mommy was going to tell them, right?

I guess I should be sending this to your other site, but it didn't seem really evil enough for that.

Glad you could stop tearing wrappers off long enough to send this, Mrs. Stickyfingers!

Before he was old enough to keep track of what he had, I shamelessly raided my son's Halloween trick-or-treat stash.

At least I wasn't as bad as another mom I know. She took her baby out trick-or-treating when the kid wasn't even a year old and couldn't eat any of her haul. The mom drove half an hour to the rich section of a town she didn't even live in so she'd get the really good candy.

Real Bad Mommies hit the Happiest Place!

A woman told me that she was visiting Disneyland with her six-year-old son for the first time. He had never been on a rollercoaster before, so she wanted to try him out on something easy to see how he liked it. The height requirement for the Matterhorn was low, so she assumed that the ride was okay for him.

Well, they got on the ride, and as soon as they got to a dark point her son started yelling, "Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" over and over until the ride ended. After that, her son made rules for rollercoasters (outdoors only, not in the dark, not fast, and no monsters).

It had only happened to her a few days before, but she planned to feel guilty about it indefinitely.