I know that this is terribly, terribly wrong, but I totally laughed when I saw this:

I mean, seriously. I know that it’s bad to talk back to police officers, I know that it’s bad to curse at police officers, I know that it’s bad to go 75 in a 60 zone, I know that it’s bad to break the law in general, but still: she’s a tiny little bad-tempered grandma and that makes it funny. (Up until the part where she gets tasered. That’s not so funny.)

Also: she could be my own mother.

My own mother wouldn’t shove a cop, I’m pretty sure, so the comparison isn’t perfect, but she’s pretty contrary and so I could totally see her talking back. I could also see her making a vibrator joke about his taser (is that a stun gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me, officer?) She’s just that way. She’s bad.

But she’s bad in a good way, and that makes her – has always made her – awesome. And her badness – her wonderful badness – has inspired me to embrace my imperfections as the things that make me who I am, the things that make me a wonderfully strange and imperfect mother. Not the kind who makes vibrator jokes – although I reserve the right to do so in my dotage – but ‘bad’ in my own way. Bad in the best way.

Which doesn’t involve breaking the law or cursing at police officers, but it does mean flouting, to some extent, prevailing social conventions. Mothers shouldn’t curse? Mothers shouldn’t complain about the being bored? Mothers shouldn’t get frustrated with their children? Mothers shouldn’t love their husbands with a different – and sometimes greater – kind of intensity than they do their children? Fine. I’m not that kind of mother. And if that makes me a bad mother I will – as I said over here the other day – embrace it fully. Because if my own mother is any kind of model to go by, bad mothers are pretty awesome.

They just need to look out for the tasers.