Children of the Corn(maze)

The ticket seller warned me not to send two10 year olds into the 10-acre corn maze without an adult, because "it's so big it's like sending them off alone into Manhattan."  I considered this for a moment, looked at Thing 2, looked at his friend and looked at the quaint antique shoppe/tea house across the street.  Then I shoved them in the direction of the cornfield with a hug and a whispered "Be careful crossing Madison Avenue." 

I figured Thing 2 could take care of himself.  He's got an exquisitely fine-tuned personal radar that alerts him, from a friend's house three miles away, of the exact moment I drop exhausted onto the couch, with a Diet Coke in one hand, the remote in the other and a cat on my lap.  This radar signals him to call me (on a school night and in the middle of a monsoon) to ask whether I can drive him and his posse to an R-rated movie at a theatre 30 miles away.

But before fleeing the scene, I pointed to the hawks (or maybe vultures) circling the cornfield and warned them that if they didn't stick together, we would likely find their dessicated bones picked clean (save for some corn silk tucked into their leg sockets) in the spring ... and they would likely miss the season finale of Jackass.

That did the trick.  No wonder they call me the Mother of All Mothers - no autographs, please.