Congratulations on Feigning Death to Avoid Helping Your Mom Go Get Groceries!

When you hear the first footstep on the first stair you’ll know, just by the creak of her weight and the moan of the wood that it won’t be enough to just say you’d rather not go to the grocery store. You know that pretending to be asleep won’t be enough to keep your mom off your back either. Hell, even telling her in a totally reasonable tone of voice that “fifteen is too old for a young woman to accompany her mother to the grocery store” probably wouldn’t get her to leave you alone.

So here’s what you’re gonna do.

By the time your mother hits the second step you’ll have the toy gun and the M-80 you stole from your little brother out. By the time her foot hits the third step you’ll have the M-80 lit and sitting on your desk, underneath one of the cleaner bowls you’ve brought up to your room so you can eat dinner alone over the last week. By the time her foot hits the fourth step you’ll have all that stage blood you swiped from the drama department out and you’ll be smearing it on yourself and by the fifth step you’ll be just covered in it. By the sixth step you’ll have laid yourself out on the floor next to a nice big pool of fake blood and after the seventh step you won’t have to count her steps no more: you’ll be still and the toy-gun will be a little bit away from your hand on the floor, splayed out.

When the M-80 goes off the steps will hasten and by the time they reach your room they’ll be more like a gallop.

Your mother will crack the door and gasp, then fall to your side weeping. You’ll stay still, as best you can, never moving, not even breathing. You won’t want to make this into a thing. You’ll just want to stay at home instead of watching your mom avoid thinking about how much she hates your dad by choosing between nearly identical brands of popsicles with you in tow.

Sure, when the police come and discover that you are, in fact, totally alive, she’ll be upset. But then you’ll have some other people there to help you out and witness, along with you, just how crazy your bitch of a mom is. And that’s worth the hassle of faking your own death, I think we can all agree.

Congratulations on Feigning Death to Avoid Helping Your Mom Go Get Groceries!