My 8 and 10-year-old had a fight yesterday. This happens a lot. I’ll be in my office working, and when my husband has successfully pretended to be too busy to listen to what they have to say, they come to me.

Their faces appear in the panes of the French doors – both pressing their hands on the glass even though I’ve begged them 900 times not to because their fingers are always inexplicably sticky.

I take a deep breath and wave them in.

“What?”

They immediately start yelling over each other.

“HE DID THIS!?”

“THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

“NO YOU’RE THE ONE WHO DID THAT!”

“MOMMY, YOU’RE TAKING HIS SIDE OVER MINE! I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!”

Then the name calling starts.

“YOU’RE A LIAR!”

“YOU’RE A CLOWN!”

“Let him speak!” I say.

“HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!”

Then my middle son yells to my oldest son in the other room (who is really awful and terrorizes our entire household) to “stand back and stand by”.

My middle son then starts telling so many lies that I become nervous that his pants will actually burst into flames. This would surely add to the planet’s environmental crisis that my son claims is not really an issue. “Duh, mommy, forest fires happen because of a lit cigarette.”

To that I say, “No shit son, really?!”

My oldest son suddenly appears at the door with an AR-15 screaming, “STANDING DOWN SIR!” and shoots me and my youngest son because he heard his brother’s call. (My middle son will later deny this and say he was just being sarcastic.)

Now I’m dead.

Oh wait, hold on! I must have had a moment of dementia. That wasn’t my 2 children! That was our presidential candidates during last night’s debate. And that wasn’t my oldest son! I was imagining the white supremacy group “The Proud Boys” who our very own President called upon and refused to denounce!

How stupid of me. My children are much more mature, and my middle and older sons are MUCH less dangerous than that.

Oh and the part about me being dead – fake news.

Just wait though, because after last night, things are definitely going to get worse.