I have a stunt mom that stands in for me nearly every Friday and some weekends. How much does one of those cost? In my case, it doesn’t cost actual money, but rather my technical expertise. I’ll explain what that entails later.

My stunt mom happens to be my oldest sister, AR*. She’s 16 years older than me. That means when I was three years old, total strangers in grocery stores and restaurants would comment on how lovely her “daughter” was (which really pissed her off to no end or so I was told). She went off to college, and I never got to know her like a sibling. She was just another adult in the myriad of adults I associated with as a child. I looked up to her whenever she came home, because I secretly thought she was my mother. She and I looked so much alike. Really, I wanted her to be my mom so desperately because she was so much fun! She would read to me, and I adored her. When she got married, I was her flower girl. She would take my other sister and me to Great America theme park, the movies, and for sleepovers at her house. We’d dress up, put on hooker red lipstick, wear her jewelry, and walk around her house in her high heels. I never wanted to go home. I wanted to live with her forever.

The only negative thing I can remember about her back then was what a dangerous horrible driver she was. She always drove a stick shift, which made it that much more nauseating as a passenger of hers. I can recall many a time screeching,“Look out!” and narrowly avoiding an accident. I swore at age 13 that if I ever had children, she certainly wouldn’t be driving them anywhere. By the time I was 19 years old, she’d had a motorcycle accident, a rear-end car accident without braking, hit a deer (totaled the car that time), put a car in a ditch upside down (another totaled car), and has even side swiped a few cars just backing out of the driveway. No one else in the family drove like that, including my brother.

She started coming every Friday afternoon. She’d take K for a walk to the park, and would leave when it was nap time. Then I had a move right before I had our second child, E*. She started coming Friday afternoons, and my husband and I would go to the bookstore. She’d play with K, give her a bath, bottle, and then got her to bed. Soon, E was old enough and AR would take both of them and watch them at our apartment every Friday evening. It was heaven!

Then, AR wanted to drive the girls to the park across town, car seats and all.  Amazingly enough, being entrusted with your nieces is enough to make you learn to drive safer. Well that and threatening her with great bodily harm and torture if she so much as hit the brakes too hard.  Guilt is a necessary thing, especially for AR’s driving.  She hasn’t even had one close call while my children are in the car with her. Plus, the girls are at the age where they would tell me, no matter how much bribery AR could pull off.

The best thing about AR being my stunt mom, is she listens and obeys our rules without question!  None of this, “the-parents-are-gone-and-I’ll-do-what-I-want” sort of thing going on. We do give her some latitude with the girls' bedtime. She enforces the rules we have and doesn’t let them get away with anything. The punishment she doles out would be the same as what we’d give the girls. God forbid if I were to die, I know she could stand in for me. My stunt mom has had to stand in for me a couple of times when I was hospitalized, and she dropped everything, no questions asked.

AR owns a bookstore, is divorced, and has no children of her own. She’s always wanted to have girls, and now in a way, she does. My stunt mom drives the 45 minutes (both ways) every Friday evening to spend time with the girls, while my husband and I have the night off. She brings the hooker red nail polish and lipstick, plus some costume jewelry, and lets the girls walk in her shoes around the house. Last week, they reenacted the entire musical Annie (for the 50^th time), complete with the movie running in sync to their loud singing. All I can say is, thank goodness I wasn’t there, or I’d probably commit hari-kari (although I’m sure it was a spectacular performance).

The trade off of having a free stunt mom is I have to set up her computer and her store’s Facebook account, tell her what refrigerator to buy, inspect her roof, fix her toilet, and answer stupid questions like, “Why is heat coming out of one burner of my stove every time I bake with it?”  I think it’s worth the royal pain in the ass minor aggravation. She’s now my best friend, and the big sister I’ve always wanted. I’d trust her with my girls’ lives.

It’s a shame she never had children. I think she would have made an amazing mother. Instead, she’s my stunt mom, and she’s not for hire...

*name has been changed because they may need to disassociate themselves from me after this blog gets out.