Chapter 1

“Mom, I am bored! The internet is out!” my sons came running into my office. I mostly work from home and throughout the day I like to read dirty stories. The few days I am in the office I can’t get away with it but at home, I can be sneaky.

My sons almost caught me, but I was quick enough to alt-tab before they did.

“Douglas, Randall, don’t sneak up on me! I could have been on a zoom call for work!” I demanded. I didn’t want them sneaking up on me while I was peaking at dirty stuff on the Internet either. “Go outside and play, that’s what we did when I was your age!”

“It’s raining!” my eldest son Doug whined. He’s going to be 16 in a few days. I don’t know whether to get him a toy or not. He still behaves like a big kid, but he’s only a few years shy of being an adult. I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.

“Then go play a board game with your sister, Janet,” I suggested. Janet is 14, and even though she is cute as a button, she keeps her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail because she’s a total tomboy.

“We’re BORED, we don’t want to be even more BORED by playing a BOARD GAME,” Randy over-enunciated some of his words and breathe his nasty breath in my face. He’s the family comedian and my little monster. It’s hard to get mad at him though because he is so cute. He’s 15 and going on 25. I’ve caught him trying to smoke, trying to drink his father’s alcohol, and even jerking off before.

I said something about the smoking and drinking, but I just closed the door and pretended I didn’t actually see him pulling his little pecker while laying flat on his back. All boys do it. Hell, even my husband Fred still does it. I’ve caught him with his pants down around his ankles before at 2 am on this very computer.

Let’s be honest, if I had a healthy sex life, Fred and I probably wouldn’t both be sneaking on this computer looking at dirty stuff. We don’t talk about it though. We’ve been married 20 glorious years and It’s easier to just go to bed, snuggle a little and then fall asleep.

“Look, I can’t be your entertainment console,” I acted like I was some kind of human-computer and made bleep-bloop noises and stuck out my tongue while moving my arms around.

“Yes, you can, come on, Mom!” Doug and Randy took me by the hand and tried to get me to come with them. It was close to 5 pm when I should be getting done with work, but I had some things I was trying to complete for the day. I reluctantly let my sons lead me down the hallway.

Let’s face it, soon they would be grown, and they won’t want to hang out with their dumb old mom. It was nice they still did. We used to build pillow forts and play all sorts of silly games when they were little.

“Show us one of the games from the great depression when you were little, Mom!” Randy joked.

“I am not THAT old, Weisenheimer,” I smirked at him. “Okay, I don’t know. Hopscotch? Hide and seek? Mother May I?”

“What’s Mother May I?” they asked as they led me into their room. Janet heard me being led down the hallway and joined.

“You don’t know this game?” I thought certainly I had taught it to them when they were little. It had been quite a while since we ever played any sort of game though and they may have forgotten. I seemed to recall it was great fun when I was a kid.

“The mother stands on one end of the room,” I said as I stood with my back to them. “Then you line up on the other end and ask me if you can move forward by saying something like “Mother may I take 3 steps forward. If you ask for too many then I’ll send you back. The first one to me wins!”

“What do we win?”

“You get to be the mother and lead the game!” I explained.

“LAME!” they collectively rejected that idea. I wasn’t sure why - perhaps just to be arbitrary or silly.

I asked them to give it a try. They were pretty skeptical.

“Mother, may I take one dumb step forward,” Doug said. His brother and sister laughed that he got bypassed.

“No, you may not, Randy, you go next.”

“Mother, may I take TWO steps forward,” Randy asked in a cute but silly voice.

“Yes, you may take two BABY steps forward,” I said. I heard everyone giggle. There were several ways I could tell them to walk.

“Mother, may I take three steps forward,” Janet asked.

“Yes, you may take three Cinderella steps forward,” I said. I heard Janet’s exasperated surprise and imagined she twirled forward with her index finger touching the top of her head like a ballerina.

“Mother, may I take three steps forward,” Doug said.

“Yes, you may crabwalk forward three steps!” I said. I had my back to him, but I assumed from the laughter that he bent backwards so that his knees were facing forward and scuttled forward like a crab three steps.

“Mother, may I take three steps forward,” Randy asked.

“Oh goodness, if you all keep asking for three steps you’ll be here soon!” I replied. The room was only so big. “Hop forward like a frog three times and say ribbit!”

“Mother, may I take two Cinderella steps forward,” My daughter said. I knew she must be close enough to win the game.

“No you may not,” I said. I heard her groan. “You may open and shut the wizard’s spell book!” Janet sounded intrigued. “Jump forwards with feet apart then again bringing the feet together like you are closing your spell book before you get blasted!”

It was great fun! The kids were laughing, and I was having a good time, I expected my daughter to be close from the sound of her voice.

“Mother, may I take ONE giant leap for mankind forward?” Douglas said. I warned him not to ask for a specific type of walk or mother will definitely not grant it.

“Take one silly step forward,” I said. I imagined John Cleese from Monty Python’s silly gait as my kids laughed. Suddenly, Doug kicked my bottom! Hard!

“OW! Billy!!”

“What? I was silly walking!”

“Uh, huh! This is not a contact sport,” I scolded him. “We’ll see how you like it now,” I joked and lined up with the others. I told them to press as far up against the far wall as they could. Douglas took my place facing away from the others.

“Mother, may I take 1 step forward?” I asked.

“Hah-hah, you have to call me MOM!” Doug snickered.

“That’s the game, Douglas,” I replied flatly.

“Don’t you mean MOTHER?” he wiggled his butt and pulled his shirt out to approximate my large boobs and spoke in a ghastly imitation of what a woman actually sounded like. “Just tell me if I can walk, Mother.”

“You can! Mother says hop like a kangaroo one time!”

I laughed and hopped one time like a goofy kangaroo. The kids laughed at me, and that was fine. It’s just a game.

“Mother, may I, take 7 steps and kick you in your big buffalo butt?” Randy said.

“No, you may not, next?”

I actually had a solid laugh that time. That was a good one.

“Mother, may I take two steps forward?” Janet asked politely.

“You may grab your butt and skip two steps forward!”

Janet frowned but she didn’t complain. It was cute when she grabbed her bottom and skipped.

“Mother, may I move two steps forward?” I asked.

“Say pretty please,” he said.

“That’s not how the game is play...” I started to explain. Douglas cut me off and told Randy to go next.

“Mother may I pretty please with sugar on top, go forward three steps,” Randy asked.

“You may go forward three steps, but backward one step, and then forward one more step, then disco dance,” Doug said. I have to admit Randy has moves. He did the John Travolta signature point and everything.

“This game is dumb, don’t make me grab my butt again! Mother, please may I take three steps forward.”

“Why certainly, my dear Janet! Grab your boobies and pull yourself forward three steps!”

My sons were boys, and I knew that boys liked to say things like this. I’ve heard Janet cuss too, so when she protested, I told her it was just a game, but she didn’t have to play. Janet didn’t have much to grab on to anyway. She pouted and stomped forward three steps while pinching her nubs through her shirt.

“Mother may I please with sugar on top and whip cream, take two steps forward,” I said.

“You are learning, Peggy!” I didn’t like that my son used my first name, but I knew why he did it. He’s the mom and I am the kid. “Give yourself a wedgie each take one step, wedgie again, and another step!”

“HAW-HAW,” Janet pointed at me and said that I had to do it.

“This is not how the game is normally played,” I was wearing a pair of stone-washed denim “mom jeans” that were probably never in fashion but women in their 40’s like me tend to wear. I pulled the backings of my panties out of my jeans just a little bit and gave myself a very slight wedgie as I stepped. Then I repeated the second step.

“You know when it’s my turn I am going mow your ass like grass, Doug” Randy vowed. I ignored his cussing because I quite wanted to see Doug get a taste of his own medicine. “Mother may I take three steps forward.”

“I am thinking, I am thinking,” Doug put his fingers to the temples of his head and concentrated. He let out an embarrassingly loud fart and covered his mouth and giggled in his imitation of my voice “Mommy fart!”

The three of us behind him didn’t want to step toward that stink so we fell out and quit playing. “That’s the end of that game!” I said as I made plans to head back to my computer and finish the dirty story I was reading.

“No, let’s do another game, mom! Show us another!” the three of them asked.

I happened to notice some cowboy stuff on the desk in my son’s room. “Okay, do you guys know cowboys and Indians?”

“Cultural appropriation!” Janet chided me.

“Do you know what that is, Janet?”

“No, but I know it’s bad,” she said.

“It’s just make-believe – you can be anyone you want to be. We are just roleplaying characters. It’s not real,” I explained. “Okay, how about cops and robbers? None of us are of any ethnicity, so we don’t offend anyone, okay?” I chuckled. “Janet and I will be the cops, and Doug and Randy will be the robbers. You are trying to rob the bank and get away.”

I made very simple rules where we’d use our fingers to shoot each other and say “bang”. When I was little, it was kind of like freeze tag. If you got shot, you were supposed to stay that way until one of your allies shot you with their gun and unfroze you. The game was over when one side had frozen the entire other side. I know it makes no sense, but the game could be over in seconds if you couldn’t unfreeze your partners.

We started playing and firing at each other, dodging and weaving around the room. It was silly and stupid.

“What happens when we win?” Doug asked halfway through the game. My son naturally assumed that since Mother May I had a winner and the tables turned so that the winner became the mother that’s how this game might work.

“The bad guys don’t win,” I explained as I hustled behind a bunk bed for cover.

“Then why play?” Doug asked as he crouched near his closet.

“Exactly, crime never pays!” I fired my imaginary pistol in the air and blew on it to prove what a bad-ass law-enforcement officer I was.

“If you win, we go to jail, and if we win, we should be able to put YOU in jail,” Randy insisted.

“Bad guys don’t put the cops in jail,” Janet shot Randy in the chest, and he froze.

“Yeah, they do! Police brutality! Look how many times you shot me! You never asked me to surrender!” Randy chuckled.

“Guys, this was fun, but I really should be getting back to my work,” I decided this was a good time to exit the virtual shoot-out in the OK Corral or whatever it was that we were doing.

That’s when I felt them – the clink of cuffs around one wrist and then my daughter grabbed my other hand, pulled it behind me and fastened the cuffs so fast that I could not stop her.

When I was a little girl, you could buy real metal handcuffs in any department store. They usually came with a sheriff’s badge, a cap gun, and a roll of blasting caps to make the gun sound like a firecracker just exploded.