1. Receive an email from your teenager with a subject line “I’m too lazy to walk over to your room so I’m emailing you instead!!!!”

2. Rejoice that you’ve raised such an energy-efficient child.

3. Read the email and learn that your teen and her BFF want to learn a foreign language so that they can talk to each other without other people understanding what they’re saying.

4. Suppress urge to let her know that only dogs can hear what she and her BFF are squealing to each other.

5. Continue to read that they have decided to learn Mandarin as their Secret Language.

6. Call 911 to ask about procedures to reattach your recently bitten off tongue.

7. Continue to read email and learn that there’s a program that’s just $10!!!! and Please send away for it ASAP, I’ll pay you back! THANK YOU!!!

8. Awww, your teen wrote THANK YOU!!! You are the best mom ever!

9. Decide not to answer email until you can come up with a non-sarcastic response.

9. Do not answer email.

10. Ignore follow ups to email.

11. Get the “I’m going to discuss this with daddy” email notice.

12. Do not respond, but silently say goodbye to $10.

13. Overhear discussion with daddy with phrases like “you’ll never learn Mandarin, how about Italian instead?” and “but so many people speak Italian!” Die of laughter.

14. Hear daddy tap in his credit card number.

15. Hear daddy say Very Bad Word.

16. Emerge from bedroom asking whatever is the matter?

17. Learn that the $10 fee is just the sign up fee and that now every month we will be receiving more Mandarin discs at a reasonable price of $60 per shot, although we can return the Mandarin that we do not want for a full refund.

18. Go back to bedroom and close door.

19. Thank the good lord that you Kegeled throughout your pregnancies because laughing now causes absolutely no leakage.

20. Secretly plan to learn Mandarin in order to understand what Teenage Daughter is saying.

Last week my 13 year old, formerly known on this blog as My Beautiful Daughter and now re-christened as Teenage Daughter, told me that I’m a very boring person, no offense.

For weeks there’s been this not-quite-tension-but-weirdness with her and me.

Like things that she used to find funny that I did, she now finds annoying. And although she’s not overtly rolling her eyes at me, it’s implied in many, many sentences.

“I love you and everything,” she told me, “but you’re just really boring.”

“I am?” I droned on.

“Yeah. You are. You don’t have anything interesting to say. Like ever. It’s annoying.”

“I like to think that I have some interesting stories,” I monotoned.

“I’d like to hear one,” she crossed her arms.

“Well, I saw a program on the television set today that there was a reckless youngster who tried to jump on a moving train and her legs were severed.”

“That’s DISGUSTING.”

“Disgusting, yes, but a cautionary tale. Let us discuss the lessons we can learn from it.”

“What kind of a person would try to jump on a moving train?”

“It was some kind of a college prank/dare situation.”

“It’s not very smart.”

“You are right, it is not very smart. Very foolish. Very dangerous.”

“Did they have video of it?”

“No.”

“Re-enactment?”

“No.”

“That’s so terrible!”

“Very tragic. Very sad not to have legs.”

“Wow.”

“I know. Pretty interesting story I told you there, right?”

“OMG. You just ruined everything by asking that. Because it’s like you just want attention or something. YOU ARE SO DIFFERENT MOM. YOU USED TO BE INTERESTING! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”

“I do not know. Perhaps I’ve always been very boring and you just recently became a lot more interesting and so I seem a lot more boring in comparison?”

“I didn’t even listen to that.”

“Ok, honey. Don’t jump on moving trains.”

“Duh.”