10 Surefire signs that you are becoming your mother

"Have you got any tampons at home?"

I turn my head slightly, eyes darting off the freeway. I am just in time to catch the look of death my almost-twelve year old niece is giving me, shuffling as close to the door as she can get with a seat belt on.

"Are you using them yet?"

She is mumbling something under her breath. It sounds a lot like "I. Can. Not. Believe. We. Are. Having. This. Conversation."

"What?" I demand. "It's just tampons. It's not like we're having 'the talk'."

Her face tells me that she is seriously considering throwing herself from the moving vehicle. A weird flash back darts through my mind and I can see my pre-teen self in the middle of Franklins, wishing the ground would swallow me up as my mother proudly declares to another shopper in aisle 5 that the over-sized pads were for my first period. Groan. This realisation jars me back to reality and I gasp, recalling numerous other recent events in which I've succeeded to embarrass children – my own or someone else's. And just like that it dawns on me. I have become my mother. It happens to us all at some point or another. Or so says my sister, who confesses that she, too, has had her "mum moments".

So here it is in black and white: Confessions of things we've done or said recently that cemented our fate and proved we really all become our mothers in the end.

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