I’ve never been one to be Punk’d. Maybe because I don’t care or hide embarrassment better than showing how terribly mortified I really am. I’ve also never taken the attributes of a Marty McFly and gotten all bent out of shape from someone calling me a chicken. When it comes right down to it, I’m the biggest chicken I know so why get offended from the truth? I eat chicken. It tastes good. Therefore I am one… or something.

So when BFam and I sat down to watch the long overdue, much hyped season opener of Heroes last night, and had time to kill with the why-God-WHY! red carpet pre-show before the season opener, we got to talking. We are parents. Our window of time to talk about things other than pull-ups, potty training, children’s education and the latest smart-mouthed thing Mooter said to land her with a fat lip before the kids leave us be for the night is small. And I say “leave us be” because saying “go to bed” would be too easy and common-sensical (yeah, I made it up). And going to bed means I must ask you for water and juice at least fifty times before I am beat senseless into the coma that will most assuredly only then lead to my rest for the evening. No other way will do. So we get to talking about money. And how we don’t have any. And we daily watch the activity of Wall Street and world finances and 401K’s which would make sense because we’re adults, but we’re adults who have never paid that kind of thing much attention until now. And we kiss college tuitions goodbye and wonder what will become of us as middle-class citizens and have never felt so close to wanting a man to become the second coming to save us from ourselves even though it would go against everything we said we wanted in a person let alone a President. And we’re all woe is us and woe is this country and woe, woe, woe when we are so full of woe that we say the one thing we always say when we are full of this much woe: We just need a million dollars to set us right. But this time we say it with such careless, lackadaisical enthusiasm that we may as well not ask for it. It is then BFam turns to me and says, “Yeah, a million dollars… or SOMEONE WRITE THAT BOOK THEY KEEP TALKING ABOUT!” After which I hurled soft things at his head because how dare you state something so obvious?!

Like I said, I don’t bend to chicken. Chicken never did anything bad to me. But call me dumb. Tell me what I’ll never do. Call me lazy. Dare me. And, for some reason, that’s different.