Attack of the 5'4" parent

At 1:30 in the morning recently, otherwise known as the middle of the night, Hunter and I awoke to a stream of curse words floating through our bedroom window on the cool breeze.

"It's an argument," I said.

"It's rap music," he said.

It was four teenagers doing gangsta rap down the block. But the rappers were white suburban teenage boys, so it was particularly profane since they had to overcompensate for the lack of urban strife in Fircrest.

But we have had some grafitti at the playground, including an F-bomb in massive letters down the kiddie slide, so Hunter and I dressed and headed down the block to Save Our Neighbors From Suburban Gangsta Rap.

By the time we arrived at the party house, where a teenage girl is rumored to live by herself most of the time, the boys were flocking on the porch, rapping in squeaky pubescent voices. My tall, imposing (dare I say sexy?) husband tells the boys that they need to quiet down, and then my pregnancy took over.

(You were waiting for the pregnancy hook, I know it.)

As the door opened and the girl stepped onto the porch, I became The Mom.

"Is there an adult in the house?" The Mom demanded.

"Um ... yeah, but she's sleeping," the girl said in the perfect cadence of a child's lie. Music blared from the living room.

"That's hard to believe," The Mom shouted over the music.

"Um ... she's a hard sleeper."

"That's hard to believe," The Mom repeated. "Well, we better not hear a peep for the rest of the night or the police will be involved."

The Mom was yes-ma'am-ed and then Hunter took The Mom home. Once there, I had some yogurt because exercising that much authority gives a person the munchies. Hunter kissed me goodnight and said, "You're such a Neighborhood Parent now."

Funny, I still feel like a college intern. With a baby bump. But I'm learning what terrible liars children are, and I hereby apologize to my parents and other authority figures for ever thinking I got one past you. I might as well have had a Lying Readerboard on my forehead.