>A New Era

There were lots of reasons why I did what I did.

I was late to the gym and had just enough time to get in a workout before returning home and making dinner. The sky looked like it was about to drop a bucket of rain on the streets, and my windshield wipers weren’t working. When the traffic light outside my neighborhood turned green, the doofus ahead of me wasn’t paying attention and continued to sit idly in his car, staring out the window. I honked and he eventually put his foot on the gas, crossing through the intersection as the light turned yellow. I wasn’t about to wait another five minutes for the light to turn green again. I followed him.

“Mommy!” A voice piped up from the backseat. “Why did you go when the light was red?”

Busted.

I paused for a moment. “I was being naughty,” I said finally. “I, uh, did a very, very bad thing. I made a mistake. And I never should have done that.”

“Green means go,” my four-year-old traffic cop reminded me. “Red means stop.”

“I know,” I said. “I was very, very bad. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She thought for a moment.

“Well,” she allowed. “It’s okay. It wasn’t that awful.”

I guess this means Punky officially has left the stage of childhood known as Theydon’trememberornoticeanythingwedoanyway. That said, it is now time to step up my game and become a Role Model.

Damn.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.