Cramping Their Styles. . .

As the scene opens, we find Lara McKnight, a Mother, left with no purpose after a series of heated exchanges with her teenagers.

While wallowing in self-pity, she receives the text.

"We're in a lockdown. When it's over, can you bring me some Midol?"

Slowly, she rises from her crumpled heap, gripping her cell-phone tightly. Salvation!

"As God is my Witness, I'll never feel meaningless again!"

She replies to the text, a look of grim determination on her face. . . "Sorry, can't! Don't want to INTERFERE too much in your life. Love you! Keep your head down!"

An hour later, the phone rings. A weak voice manages a barely audible groan, then speaks haltingly. "Uhhhhh, Mah-ham. I have craaaaaamps. I don't feeeeeel well. Pleaaaaaaaase come get me. Pleeeeeeaaaaase!?"

Taking pity on the ovaries of her offspring, our heroine meanders toward the Dean's office and saves her child from an afternoon of gloom, despair and agony.

There are words exchanged between mother and daughter with nary a sound, it takes but a milli-second of eye contact to leave the "Uh-huh!" reverberating silently between them.

Were there a camera recording this, Lara McKnight would offer a piercing gaze, a subtle hint of a smirk, and this challenge: "Next!"

Teens beware, what goes around (and around!) with you most assuredly comes around when you need her. (I'll keep my cell phone handy. . . )