Squirrel Thoughts

Did your mom ever use the ol’ trick of telling you she had eyes in the back of her head to keep you from misbehaving when you were a kid? Well, mine did, and let me tell you, it’s probably the reason I’m not behind bars today.

Because I was super gullible, and like, 4, when she first pulled this on me, I took her warning literally, and was absolutely terrified I would accidentally catch a glimpse of this extra set of peepers while she was brushing her hair or something.

I imagined I’d be walking past the bathroom, minding my own business. All of a sudden, her hair would part a certain way, and … AHHHHHH! There they’d be: The Back Eyes. Staring me down, just daring me to do something they would see and could tattle to the Front Eyes about.

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Of course, my imagination didn’t stop there. What if she actually had, like, 8 or 10 or 12 eyes back there, like some kind of weird hybrid spider head?!? And some of them looked like those eyes that are actually mouths??

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I decided I should probably behave, because maybe if I did, The Back Eyes would no longer serve a purpose, so they’d shrivel up and disappear, their very existence no longer plaguing me.

Luckily, I wised up a few years months later and realized my mother didn’t literally have eyes in the back of her head, just some weird sixth sense moms have that alert them to even the most minor transgressions their children commit. At least, I haven’t accidentally discovered concrete evidence otherwise. Yet.