The Most Important Job in the World? You can take this job and SHOVE IT!

That's it. I quit. I hate being a mom today. This job sucks and sucks hard. I don't want to do the right thing. I don't want to do the hard thing. I want to fix it for him. I want to rush in and make it all better. I don't want to mean what I say. I want to take it back and bail him out of the jam he's put himself in.

I hate being Mom. I want to be the other kid's mom who's always more fun and interesting than I am. The other kid's mom gets the benefit of my kid's polite manners and his consideration. All the stuff I taught him when he insisted it wasn't necessary. The other kid's mom gets told the latest gossip. The other kid's mom is shown compassion when her kid tells her to shut it and go back into the house. How could friend treat his mom like that, my son asks in utter shock and disbelief, she's SOOOOOOO nice. I hate the other kids' mom.

I want to fast forward to the phone call I will get 20 years from now. The one where he apologizes for being selfish, rotten, and ungrateful. The one where he tells me he now understands the sacrifices made on his behalf. The one where he recalls (in detail) the times I made the hard choices and held my ground, and that he has a deep appreciation for how excruciatingly difficult that must have been for me. He knows because he's an adult, now, and not 15. He's learned some things the really hard way and he can see his own child heading down that same road and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. And that sucks and sucks hard.

But I'm not there yet and neither is he. I'm here, at my kitchen table, with my head pounding and sulking teenager sending death threats to me through the floor. But it will be a cold day in hell before I let that wish come true for him. And miss the phone call I've got come to me? Oh, hell no.