I consider myself to be a semi-cool mama.

Maybe I’m decidedly uncool because I just referred to myself as cool. Are the kids even still saying cool these days?

I take it back. I’m not cool. Not even semi.

Let’s pretend for a minute that I take regular hat tips from the Mia Wallace guide to living life—you know, without that whole heart-stopping adrenaline shot and well, the whole twist contest thing—and I’m unsquare.

I work very hard to make sure that my children’s father is the more embarrassing one, the one that elicits the many, many preteen eyerolls. He mortifies my oldest daughter regularly with his pop singing and dancing (Drake. DRAKE!) and general nerdy weirdness (He wears hoodies, you know, and fixes our Netflix so we can get the US Netflix instead of the mostly craptastic Canadian one. But he’s mine. You can’t have him.) and, you know, talking about people he knows absolutely not a single thing about and wanting to dance with her in front of her friends.

So, he’s the square one.

Only, there’s just one thing.

That one little thing that I do that I just cannot control and sends my kids into “I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU JUST DID THAT HOW ARE YOU MY MOTHER PLEASE PRETEND THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME THE NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME PUBLIC”s.

Whilst in the car, I speak, yell, and have lengthy—sometimes featuring some colorful language—to the other cars around me.

“You know that thing, Buddy, it’s called a stop sign. It’s not called a maybe, sort of, sometimes slow down a little bit.”

“Well, are we going to sit at this 4-way stop all afternoon. Someone has to go!”

“Really?! REALLY!” Throws hands up in the air and shoots the stupid drive my best WTF face.

“No. No. No, I’m not letting you in. You can inch your sports car in as much as you like, but driving up the non-lane over there and then trying to squeeze your red ass in at the last minute is lame. Not happening, bucko. Nope. You *are* the weakest link. Goodbye.”

“It’s a really good thing you cut me off there, jerkbucket. You just saved yourself exactly 11 seconds on your journey.”

“USE YOUR TURN SIGNAL DAMMIT. It would be helpful if I knew where you were going. I’m not a mind reader, you know! Who do you think I am…Oda Mae Brown?!”

“What are you slowing down for. Go. Go. Go. GO! You have a green light. Lady, that’s about as green as it gets.”

My kids basically die in the backseat.

But, at least they never ask me to drive their friends anywhere.