Double bad mommy -- loses arguments with her kid, plus she's going to Hell.

My son spends ninety percent of his time at the park running around like a loon, because that's his job. I spend my time there sitting in my little portable chair, because that's mine. We only run into trouble when he decides every once in a while that he wants to sit down, and I point to the ground and invite him to pull up a patch of grass.

He inspected my chair ruefully on a day like this. "That's a captain's chair," he said. "I want to become a captain, because then I could sit in the chair."

"No, you couldn't," I said territorially. "If you become a captain, I'll become a colonel, and I'll outrank you, so I get the chair."

We had a brief discussion of ranks -- he's too young to know much about them, plus we're pacifists. "If you become a colonel," he said at last, "I'll be a general."

"Fine," I said. "I'll be the king."

He knew what to do with that, having read a lot of Calvin and Hobbes (the comic, not the philosophers). "Then I'll become emperor," he said.

"Then I'll become God," I said. (We're irreverent pacifists.) I sat triumphantly. I never win an argument with him, and I had to win this one. Even he couldn't figure out a way to outrank God.

He was stumped for a minute. He had to sit there and think about it. Then he smiled. "If you become God," he said, "I'll become God's mom."

Well, what do you know? He won that one, too.