Get Busted, aka Parents Gone Wild

This is the June edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you'd like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I'll do my best to get it there!


Get Busted

When my kids were little, their doctor busted me.

“Anyone in the house smoke?” she asked.

“No,” I said, totally telling the truth.

“Mom!” My five-year-old daughter looked at me wide-eyed, as if I’d said a bad word. Then she turned from me to her new role model, the kind and presumably honest lady doctor. “My dad smokes.”

“Busted!” said the doctor.

Cut to me backpedaling and using way too many words to explain away my husband’s weekly cigar. Or was it nightly? Either way, he smoked outside so it didn’t really count. Right?

“Right,” the doctor assured. She was nice, unlike the little traitor I’d been feeding for half a decade.

That brush with not-even-bad behavior made me want to let out a rebel yell. Being a grown up can be so lame. It reminded me pool party where, by the time the cops showed up, we had dwindled to a dozen thirty-somethings around a half empty keg making really bad karaoke.

Back in the day, I rocked a pretty hard Love Shack baby, but that involved way more alcohol than my adult liver cares to process. But now I have fun in a mature and non-rebellious way, drinking beer not purchased by anyone’s older sister or boyfriend, but by tax paying and law abiding adults.

We’d started to gather bags and say our goodbyes when two young officers appeared inside the gate. I would have sworn they were strippers. (That, or our host had put them up to it to make us all feel younger and badder.) But they were completely serious. After interrupting a particularly heartbreaking rendition of Prince’s Kiss they said to the homeowners – and I quote – “don’t make us come back out here.”

Had someone been watching Cops? I ached for the DJ to cue up that Bad Boys song. What-chou Gonna Do? The guy who’d had to stop mid-Falsetto looked like my eight-year-old when I say lights out. Just a little longer? Pleeeeeze!

I wondered what the police expected to find. No rebels here - just a bunch of grown-ups amid a sea of mayonnaise-based salads and a beer fridge full of milk. My husband, who hadn’t been too hot on the party idea in the first place, gave me a look that said this never happens while watching World’s Greatest Engineering Feats. But we’d had a great time. Who can argue with burgers, brew and ‘tater salad? The only thing missing were his cigars.

The big question – other than don’t the police have some Meth labs to eradicate? - was who would call the cops on us? Did the shrill of our under-primed voices at 10:15 on a Saturday night rile the neighbors? Was backyard karaoke now a crime? Bad words crowded the tip of my well-behaved, un-pierced tongue.

We shared stories from Fondmemoryland where life was one big kegger. We recalled busts long past and embellished tales of daring escapes and stealth camouflage in basements and shrubberies. Now our booze is tempered with chips and dips, the babysitter needs to be home by eleven, and we really shouldn’t swear, but can’t we have any fun at all? On the drive home I wondered if the OnStar people could fine me for singing off key to the radio.

I wanted to be irked about the cops showing up to ruin our fun, but truth was, the party was pretty much over anyway and there’s nothing to make you feel like your old rebel self than getting busted by the cops. Even if it was only for really bad singing. So slam one back, light one up, sing off key. Get busted! I dare you.


Lela Davidson is a Northwest Arkansas writer with a mean Dixie Chick impersonation. The closest she’s been to busted lately is when her family almost turned her in for serving past dated potato salad.