I had great plans to torment my children this morning, the morning of the first day of school. I had the alarm clock set early so I could sneak into their bedrooms and delicately awaken them with an old air horn I found in the back of my husband’s shed while simultaneously singing Poison’s “Your Mama Don’t Dance” at the top of my lungs while perfecting the art of tossing my hair around.

I planned on actually cooking breakfast for them this morning instead of the usual of slapping two empty bowls, a box of Cheerios and a jug of milk in front of them. (And by actually cook I mean pour premade pancake batter out of a jug into the non-stick waffle iron. Maybe toss some bacon into the microwave. Maybe.)

I planned on chirping happily to them as I tossed a couple of slices of bologna into some bread for their lunches while they munched on the breakfast I so thoughtfully and meticulously made for them.

I had a series of Miss Molly Homemaker moments planned this morning before my children toddled off to school for yet another new and exciting year of public education and peer powered persecution.

My children, however, had other plans. Plans that included getting up at the butt-crack of dawn, creeping about the house silently like thieves and getting ready for school while I drooled out of the left side of my mouth on to my pillow and softly snored.

I woke up to the sound of the coffee beans being freshly ground for me and the clatter of a bowl being dropped into the sink. I blearily looked at the clock and noted no sane person should be up at such an unholy hour and cursed my demon spawn for being excited to go to school instead of behaving like normal kids and hiding under the covers until they are dragged from their beds kicking and screaming.

Apparently, two months of having me in their faces constantly inspires my children to want to go learn. Away from me. I’m choosing not to take this as a reflection upon my parenting, no matter what I may have over heard my daughter tell my son last night while they did the dishes.

While disappointed that my kids foiled my plans for morning amusement, I am nothing if not adaptable. Which just means I’ll wait until a morning they over-sleep to bust out the airhorn. Heh.

Unlike my children, I am not excited about the start of school. I rather enjoy having my children around at all times to fetch me a drink, cook me supper and take the clothes out of the dryer for me. Unless Nixon grows opposable thumbs on his front paws and learns to walk upright, it looks like my reign as Queen of the Coach Potatoes has come to a screeching halt for the next ten months.

Besides that, my daughter is entering junior high. Middle school. Seventh grade. This hardly seems possible to me. After all, it was just yesterday that I was in the seventh grade and desperately wishing for a pair of boobs to sprout on my chest. Or so it seems.

Now it’s my daughter’s turn and it’s freaking me right the fack out. She’s going to be twelve in less than 2 weeks and I’m only 32. I’m still a baby for crying out loud, no matter what the crows feet and wrinkles on my forehead say.

Junior high was the gateway to hell puberty for me. It’s where I had some of the best moments of my school years as well as some of the worst.

It has taken me most of my adult years to get over the wounds suffered during those formative years and I am not ready just yet to repeat the experience through my daughter.

Junior high was when I started wearing aqua green eyeliner and frosted pink lip stick. I back combed my hair and used more hairspray than any human being should ever spray during their entire lifetimes. I strutted about in acid washed jeans and over-sized neon tee shirts. I stuffed my bra.

Junior high meant boyfriends, tongue kissing and dances. It meant Friday night house parties at what ever kid’s house whose parents were dumb enough to leave them alone for the night.

Junior high meant doodling on scrap pieces of paper about the dark haired boy with green eyes who didn’t know I was alive. To this day I’m a sucker for dark hair and green eyes. Damn you, Jamie G. If only you had noticed my googly eyes on you back then, I’m sure my life would have turned out different. Heh.

Junior high is where I slowly started to unfold my wings to get ready to fly from my nest and explore the skies of the world. It’s where I got the first real glimpses of who I was to become before disappearing under the weight of my painfully self-aware and insecure self.

Scarier still is the fact that junior high was were I learned about sex. Not through our mandatory sexual ed classes and snickering while a room full of hormonal boys and girls made crude jokes and peeled a condom on banana. No, I learned the real truth about sex through gossip and furtive whispers and hidden notes that spoke of who let who into their pants or got drunk at a party and had sex in a bush.

Up until that precious moment in time, I never knew what anal sex was. I simply thought the butt was a one way door and not the gate way to the pleasure palace for some.

I do not want my daughter to know what anal sex is, people. Hell. I don’t want her to know any of this. I want her to be the sweet little girl who still struggles to tie her own shoe laces, not the young lady she’s blossoming into who can conjugate verbs into three languages, play two instruments and is wearing her first pair of leather loafers with a wedge heel out the door and into middle school hell.

When I was in junior high, my parents were invisible. I did my very best to pretend they didn’t exist.

Which is why I am determined to do my very best to remind my daughter that I do exist, that I won’t be rendered invisible and forgotten. No child of mine will ever be too cool to acknowledge my presence.

If that means chasing them down the driveway to get the requisite back to school shot while wearing nothing but a robe and slippers, then that’s what I will do to remind them I’m still here, loving them as they grow into themselves and away from me.

If that means making them turn around to pose while all the cool kids, their friends and even the bus driver wait while I immortalize this moment for posterity, so be it.

And if my robe happens to gape open and a boob falls out, blinding the eyes of all the children and teens on the bus and mortifying my spawn, then that is a price I am willing to pay to remind my children they can run, but they can never hide from me.

They will never escape from this mother’s love. Or, apparently, my boobs.

At least I made my daughter’s first morning to junior high memorable. One way or another.