When Life Hands you Miley

 When life hands you lemons, the thought is that there is always lemonade to be made. So what do you do when life hands you Miley Cyrus? That was the conundrum I faced one bright spring day at the airport in Toronto. I made lemonade.

In order to set this up, I must state that my children were in their teens during a few years of busy travel with work. It became the norm that I was gone almost as often as I was home, it wasn’t a problem, just a fact. The girls didn’t question where I was going nor what I was doing, because when your mother is a “spy”, she just doesn’t disclose details. Their imaginations were very active when it came to my work, and they told everyone that their mother was, indeed, a spy. (I can assure you I’m not – said every spy ever lol)

So this particular day I was in Toronto. Just the week before, I had left Toronto airport and was telling the girls when I got home how my t-shirt had triggered this big event, I was like the Reitman’s commercial. I had to go through the scan and then go to be searched in a room – Reitman’s got it right, clothing can do that.

Because of that and being the spy thingy, when I called Shawna from Toronto the next week and said that I was in a high secure area at the airport it didn’t fizz on her. When I said that Miley C was there, she didn’t question that either. To be truthful, Shawna was the second child that I called. The first call had been to Stacey, but she ignored her mother’s call – though to this day and to her chagrin, she says she didn’t see my number come up – again I digress and it was her loss at that time.

So, I handed the phone to Shawna, and she had the big ole discussion with Miley about her new song – Wrecking Ball – and some of her other songs, her acting, her concerts, etc. The conversation went on for fifteen minutes or so before Miley said she had to go to catch her plane, she was getting ready for a concert.

I took the phone back and Shawna screamed and cried before I hung up. She told me I had made her life. “OMG Mom, I’m going to die. I just talked to Miley Cyrus.” When she told me to get a picture with Miley I told her I couldn’t because she was already gone.

When I got home that Friday they all asked me questions about how I knew it was her, what had happened, was I excited, and so on.

So there you have it. Or do you?

In truth, I believe Stacey would have been more suspicious, and Sharon would have been downright disbelieving, so perhaps it was good that the first call was with Shawna and that I left it there.

You see, when I hung up from Shawna, I thanked Rachel, the daughter of a co-worker, who had been not so eager to pull the prank at first. Apparently, it is not a thing you do anywhere else, or maybe I’m just a weird parent. Rachel sounded so much like Miley that she could be a voice double. Hearing her voice took me all of two minutes to come up with the scheme. It took about twenty minutes of convincing before Rachel reluctantly took the phone from me, but she got right into it when she was talking to Shawna.

We chuckled when I saw a Facebook post from Shawna saying she’d just talked to Miley, and the posts from her sisters asking why it couldn’t be them, etc. etc.

So you might think that I must have felt bad. But I didn’t. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Needless to say I didn’t tell them the difference. Well, until about five years later. You know all those times people post “you know who is reading your posts”, so I posted, “you know if your daughters read your posts” and told of the prank I had played those years before.

Shawna was the first to be devastated over it. She had been fully convinced that one of the highlights of her life had been speaking to Miley. “Way to destroy me, Mom. LOL,” she replied.

Mean Momma, I know. But when life hands you Miley Cyrus, or the voice of Miley Cyrus, what else can you do?