Sorry kids, mom may be a little late

One day my son Justin had called looking for someone to pick him up.

I was busy and told him I wouldn't be able to pick him up for half an hour.

His response was, “Is that a mom half hour or a dad half hour?”

Hoping that the 'dad half hour' was the worst of the two, I took a chance that if I told him it would be the 'mom half hour' it was going to be well received.

I understood where he was coming from. As a parent, when you're running late and one of your kids calls asking where you are, not wanting to be nagged for being later than you promised you'd say, “I'm two minutes away.”

In reality, you were probably 10 minutes away, but two minutes sounds better.

Unless you were really 20 minutes away.

Maybe that's where the dad half-hour thing kicks in.

Often Justin would call to see when I was leaving work. Then he'd call again after some time had passed to see if I had left yet.

“Yep,” I'd tell him. “I'm on my way.”

Sometimes as I was taking these phone calls I was walking to my car in the parking lot. But seeing whereas a minute ago I was sitting in a chair in my office and now I was in a moving motion, it counted as “on my way.”

“So you've left work,” he'd say. “Yep,” I'd tell him. It wasn't a lie.

Still, little lies are part of parenting.

When my oldest son Jacob was around three or four years old I can remember going to a fast food restaurant. Not wanting to have to deal with the hassle of going inside that day, plus I had other errands, I said we were going through the drivethru.

“Awwww…..” came his voice from the back seat.

“Sorry,” I said, “I only have outdoor money.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, content with my response.

Hmmm. Apparently, I was onto something.

For the next few months whenever we went to this place, he'd always ask if I had indoor or outdoor money, not realizing that the answer would depend on my mood as opposed to what was inside my purse.

I thought I was absolutely brilliant until one day, as we were pulling into the parking lot, I chimed, “We'll have to go through the drive-thru, I only have outdoor money.”

“I don't believe there is such a thing as indoor or outdoor money,” he said, quite matter-of-factly.

My deception days were over.

I work from home now and my kids are much older – 25 and 21 – and Jacob doesn't live in Yarmouth anymore, so the 'When are you coming home?' calls are a thing of the past. Still, although there were times I wasn't home at the exact moment I said I would be, it did usually fall within that 'mom half hour' timeframe, give or take.

Case in point. Another time Justin had called one evening, asking when I'd be home from a work assignment. I give him my guesstimate.

After a bit of time, he called again, asking if I was on my way home.

“Yes, I left work,” I told him, leaving out the part that I was on the waterfront taking photos of the most glorious sunset.

The photos I was taking were worth the price of being 15 minutes late, I figured.

Turns out there is outdoor money after all.