Have I mentioned how old I am lately?

And aging at a rapidly increasing rate.

I've been raising kids for 28 years this November. Haven't killed one, yet. Haven't misplaced one, yet. Haven't ever been called by the school...until today.

When I saw the number on caller ID I assumed The Not Nice Kid was sick. Allergies. Football in the face. Sudden stomach virus.

Nope. When I answered the phone the PRINCIPAL, as in...THE PRINCIPAL...told me TNNK had something to tell me.

As we speak at eight o'clock tonight, the dog is under the bed...upstairs. The Nice Kid is in her room with the door shut, furiously texting her friends while the walls shake. The Big Boy, TNNK and I are all in the den. We're all crying.

For some reason known only to God and TNNK, she took it upon herself to write on the table in the library....."Mrs Library stinks" and "Mrs Library is a a-hole". Leaving out the two S's didn't make it any better. The school requires her to write a letter of apology to Mrs. Library, and to serve detention next Wednesday.

The parents? Require her to crawl on her knees to Missouri, kiss a cow, and crawl back. Without food or water.

Y'ALL!!! My parents were teachers and I heard about kids like this. I cried all afternoon, debated on reform school versus military school, considered sterilization so that those people (that would be the family I married into) don't reproduce anymore.

And then. And then. And then? I went into the liquor store while The Nice Kid was at tennis and was telling the story to the clerk there, who is a childhood friend of mine. And y'all...she started telling a story I had FORGOTTEN, and it totally restored my faith in shitty kids.

When my sister, who is two years younger than I am, was in tenth grade, a group (Denise couldn't remember if it was six or eight but she thinks eight because they were in two cars) decided to drive into the next state and make a Boone's Farm run. I don't know if Boone's Farm is a universal thing but around here, that and malt liquor is what we started out on. (That's a good place to start because face it...there's no way to go but up.) So the kids leave our fair city in two cars...a red Camaro and a blue Mustang. They drive across the state line, buy an excessive amount of nasty sweet wine and start back. Not bothering anyone; not breaking any laws other than underage possession.

Unbeknowest to them? At the same time they were in the booze-selling town, someone robbed a bank there. And the someone was driving a blue Mustang.

They got about ten miles out of town when all hell broke loose. They were pulled over at gunpoint and taken to jail. The jail they were taken to was in the town where my mother, the only teacher at that school to ever be named Teacher of the Year twice, was teaching.

They called her. At school.

Then they called my dad, in this county. He was the county Superintendent of Education, and they called the Board of Education to find him.

Can you believe I've forgotten this? Turns out, when the kids were missed I got called into the office and lied about where they were. And I don't remember a lick of this.

I do, however, feel a little bit better about TNNK's future prospects. It's highly possible she may dodge the jail thing, and if she maintains the athletic prowess she's already famous for face it...she might even end up famous!!!

Like OJ.