Note: Once this (https://mominterrupted.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/im-your-mom-not-your-concierge/) got published, I got the usual nice feedback from my mother, and then the rest of the world chimed in.

Not long after this column was published, I got a letter from a woman who was fairly irked with me. She said, in so many words, that

a) it was, in fact my job to trot the kid’s lunch up to him no matter how many times he forgot it, since

b) it is, in fact, a 10-year-old’s job to forget things and oh, and another thing:

c) she felt blessed to have a forgetful 10-year-old boy and it was really a crime to ever refer to one as a ‘terror,’ no matter what the provocation and while she was at it:

d) gave me her cell phone number to give to Sam so that, if he biffed his lunch again and I was too mean to bring him more food she would get into that Twinkie/Sunny Delight/hot dog stash in her car and run some up to him because we all know that going hungry for three hours is torture too horrible to bear, especially if it’s your own fault.

Naturally, I was stunned. I turned to Sam, who even then was a thoughtful, intelligent kid, and read this woman’s letter to him.

His first comment: “Does she understand you’re writing a humor column?” Well, maybe not. I’ll remind her.

His second comment: “Is she trying to say that you don’t love me enough?” Um, I’m thinking.

His third comment: “Well, she’s wrong.” Awwww….do you want her cell phone number?

His fourth comment: “No. I want to be a grown up boy, who remembers his lunch and his mortgage payment, whatever that is.”

So I wrote back to Irked Lady and told her what Sam had said, word for word. I also told her that my husband had wanted to keep her cell phone number in case *he* had an emergency but I had told him he was going to have to root around in the laundry basket for his underwear like the rest of us. For awhile, the family joke whenever any crisis occurred was, “Quick! Call that lady! She has hot dogs and Twinkies!!!!”

A while later, a friend of mine who lives in the ‘Tuk called me to tell me that she had been to a parenting class at her local church. The facilitator actually pulled out this column and read it to the class, not as a cautionary tale, but as an example of ‘right thinking.’

I should have called Irked Lady and let her know.