Chapter 6

Megan was the first one to offer her comment. “I think it’s a dumb idea, because first off, I don’t want to call you a fart face and even if I did my sister is not going to be able to go 24 hours without going back to her old behavior.”

Tracy stopped Lilith before her daughter could escalate what Megan said into another bickering match. “Then we would have 24 hours of peace and support, that we didn’t have before. If you never insult me that’s perfectly fine with me. You would just know that you can say anything you want to me, and you won’t get in trouble. You don’t actually have to do it.”

Paul asked how his mom would know that they were getting along.

“I know when you aren’t getting along. If it doesn’t feel like constant drama, then I’ll know you are. Any time you give me a dare I am on the honor system to do my best. You will be too,” my wife was happy to answer questions, and she liked that one.”

“Okay, but what if Allan comes into my room at night and farts in my face or something, but I was good.”

“You hold me down and fart in MY face!!” Allan pointed out that he was doing it as retaliation because his brother was bigger than him, and he had to be “silent but deadly”.

Paul shot back that he just likes to do it to gross him out, and the two boys argued.

“If you agree to the dare, and you fart in each other’s faces out of spite then the dare is over. You know you get mad you could always dare me to let you fart in my face? I don’t mind.”

“Really? Not as part of this dare but anytime? Like now?” Paul asked enthusiastically. Allan wanted to go first, and the two boys started bickering again.

Allan went next. He had asked Tracy in a very apprehensive tone “Do we actually have to mean it if we call you fart face?”

“Great question, if you need to blow off steam as an outlet. If your brother makes you angry, then call me what you’d call them. When you laugh at me for dancing the funky dance, I know I am being silly. I don’t think you hate me, or think I am a total fool. I just think it’s funny to you. You can mean it, or you can think it’s funny. If you actually dare me to let you cut a fart in my face, I’ll actually be one”

Allan had a follow-up question that made it obvious which way he was leaning on this dare. “When you drop us off at school and we kiss your goodbye, we can say ‘Goodbye Fart Face? Even if our friends are nearby”

“Yes” Tracy explained “As long as all four of you are not bickering, you can tell me my breath smells like farts and I look like a big turd, too. Is that something you would want to do?”

Allan blushed. He was tempted to say yes, but he didn’t want to say it out loud.

Lilith threw her hands up and said that this was a pointless dare since it would last about five minutes anyway.

“You might be right, Lilith and maybe I am wrong for asking you to consider it. Let me ask all of you to turn around and face away from each other. I want you to raise your hand if you agree with the following statements.”

My wife asked if the kids would like to feel supported by their siblings, not be ridiculed at home and not fight with each other. All hands including Lilith went up.

“I am not going to be mad at you if you raise your hand to this next one. I am not a big of fan of incentive-based dares where if you agree then you get something you wanted. The only reason I made my dare hard for me is because I know just how hard what I am asking you is going to be for the four of you at first. Eventually, once you find yourselves lifting each other up, it will be like today at the beach instead of yesterday when you were at each other’s throats over a Monopoly game where you all felt the others cheated.”

There was some grumbling and muttering people making up rules and outright cheating from the kids.

“Even if you personally don’t intend to ridicule me, call me by my first name or fart face, cut me off in the middle of my lectures and tell me they are dumb and boring, would it amuse you on some level to be able to do it, or hear other people doing it and I can’t retaliate, back talk, or get angry.”

Lilith raised her hand, and Tracy expected an honest answer.

Allan initially tried to cheat and see what Paul was going to do. Tracy anticipated that and told them to look straight ahead. “I don’t want any peer pressure. The answer you are looking for Allan isn’t in your brother’s hand. You still have to do what I tell you, but you can call me funny names if you want. It’s a simple question.”

Allan raised his hand slowly, and so did Paul.

Megan didn’t.

“We could dare you to let us call you names anyway,” Lilith pointed out with her back turned to the others.

“You could, but I don’t have to agree. This is a family dare. You know I rarely propose dares, but when I do then I put a lot of thought into them. My reasons for daring you should be obvious but raise your hand if any of you have a better dare that might lead to the same outcome?”

Everyone put their hands down. Allan put his hand up once and then dropped it right away.

“What is it, Allan?” she asked patiently.

Allan said he didn’t have a dare. “I was just going to ask that if Paul and I could agree to get along would you be willing to do the dare for us?”

When his mother asked him why he asked that, he said that Lilith would probably find it impossible not to make fun of one of them, and Megan was probably too nice to want to see Tracy get called names.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter, because one of you would find it offensive,” Tracy was obviously talking about Megan and the others knew that as well. “Unless all of you found it amusing then it would not, please me. I decided a long time ago that if my nudity around the house offended one of you, I’d take steps to make it, so you were comfortable.”

“Oh, NOW you tell us,” Lilith was joking. It was a nice dose of levity.

“I know everybody think it’s me, but I didn’t say it would offend me. The question was would it amuse me. No, it would not. Mom’s booger eating doesn’t amuse me, but I don’t mind it because Paul and Allan like it. If everybody agreed to get along, I’d love it,” Megan said. “Mom, I respect you too much to make fun of you.”

“Hey,” Lilith wasn’t trying to start an argument, but she wanted to bring up a point. “I just realized that Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong is passing the salt to agree to this dare. She’ll have the easiest time of any of us, because she is the most like you, Mom!”

Megan thanked her sister and said that was the biggest compliment.

“I meant it as one, but that means if you want to commit to a challenge dare, and not passing the salt it has to be something else for you. I think we should be able to insult you, ridicule you, and make fun of you,” Lilith knew her sister would never agree to that.

Megan shot her a lemony smile and rolled her eyes. She said it would be a better dare if she had to give her sister shit for no reason. “I’ll just have to hurl abuse at you and let YOU take it. Maybe you would see how it feels to be on the receiving end and see what mom wanted to do this in the first place?”

“This was a good discussion. The dare was complicated. It really doesn’t matter if it’s easier for Megan or it isn’t. If that’s the perception of the others that will build resentment and the dare was doomed from the start. Not all ideas are good ones, I am glad we at least put it on the table, and you all considered it. Thank you for participating. We can always revisit it another time,” My wife acknowledged that the discussion had gone about as far as it would go.”

“Now, you both dared me to let you fart in my face, are you ready now?” she asked her sons. They were overjoyed.

“You could HAVE to call mom a whore or a slut?” Lilith said.

Megan thought she was joking at first but realized that might somehow work.

My wife was bending over, waiting for Paul to fart in her face. He was wearing his swimming trunks.

“I’d like to modify my part of the family dare,” Megan said. “I will agree to everything else the others agree to do. However, I use Mom’s first name only. Even if I call her the other names, I won’t call her mom. Even if I tease her, she knows I am just goofing. However, I will never agree to not be able to tell her that I love and appreciate her if I want too.”

Tracy was naked, but that didn’t stop her from hugging Megan tightly. “You could always tease me, and I’ve known you were on my side, and you loved me.” She said that to all the kids.

Paul and Allan agreed to the dare on the condition that they to would be able to say they loved their mom and appreciated her. Tracy thanked them for that and said she never would have stopped them.

“I really don’t know how this is going to play out. I am glad I brought up the hypothetical, but I feel like I should have just dared you to me call you Tracy, because that’s all I ever wanted to do in the first place. I wanted to see how you took it. Now, I have to be nice to my sister and brothers,” Lilith made a cute face and stuck her tongue out like it disgusted her, but she was clearly being facetious. “Obviously, I agree to the dare on the condition I can say how much I love you and appreciate it, but also that when I don’t – you automatically know that I do.”

All five of them agreed enthusiastically, and it was done and agreed upon just like that.

“Okay Bitch, I hope your stupid dumb ass is ready to be talked down too,” Lilith was clearly joking as she tested out her new privilege.

Tracy chuckled sweetly and said that she would have agreed to a lot more to know that they really get along.

After that long dare was agreed upon, nothing changed right away. No one hit my family with a magic “Kumbaya” ray that turned them into a Stepford family of kind, supportive people who never complained about each other bickered.

What did happen was that they were pretty mellow, and excited about the agreement they just made. All of our kids liked the idea of a stress-free, drama-free house and were skeptical it would last. None of them wanted to be the one that violated the rules for others.

Lilith made a joke and called her mom a bitch when the bet was agreed upon to test the ice to see if they could really walk on it. None of my kids started immediately calling their mom whore or slut or verbally humiliating her.

My wife is not a bitch, and that word fits her as much as calling a field mouse a vicious predator. No one really felt the need to do anything more than call her Tracy every now and then to see how it felt.