“Moooom,” the front door slams shut and my 11-year-old son throws himself on the couch like he’s lawn-bowling. His delivery is something akin to a death announcement, “You probably don’t want to hear this, but Indi kissed a girl.”

“He what?!” I flip my laptop closed and lock him in the stare of perpetual truth-telling. “Tell me everything you know.”

“I dunno. Sarah said that Alicia said that Carlie said that Amanda said that Indi kissed a girl.” He flashes a fiendish grin. Getting his brother in serious ka-ka is a full-time, full-contact sport.

“So we’re talking a rumour here?” I ask hopefully.

“Nah, he told me it’s true.”

I roll my eyes and begin a series of toe-tapping exercises. Normally, finking on his twin brother is punishable by discipline just short of death. I despise a tattle-taler. I close my eyes and do painful mathematical computations in my head. Keeping track of the boys’ “girlfriends” is about as easy as nailing Jell-O to the wall. “So who’d he kiss?”

“Tasha.”

“Tasha? But I thought his girlfriend was Carlie?”

“No, Carlie’s my girlfriend now.” Eden peels off his socks and throws them at the coffee table.

“I thought you were seeing Kacy?” I shake my head — my synapses are starting to misfire.

“Nah, we switched.”

“But he kissed Tasha?” I scrutinize the flow-chart I’ve compiled for exactly this purpose and give him a blank look. It just doesn’t add up.

“Sheesh Mom,” Eden snorts and addresses me like I’ve just come out of a coma, “His girlfriend was Michelle… but he dumped her so he could go out with Kacy… but she dumped him, so he kissed Tasha… and now he’s back with Kacy again.” He slides off the couch and heads for the computer. “Get with the program, Mom.”

“Get with the program?” My heart flips a double-beat and I make a mental note to file for an unlisted number. The last thing I need is to be charged with aiding and abetting the de-flowering of an 11-year-old girl’s garden. “Nobody answer the door or the phone,” I yell panicked. “Her parents are going to kill me!”

“Kill who?” Indi has one foot in the door, the other apparently lodged somewhere up my backside.

“Kill you! What are you doing kissing girls? You can’t be messing with girls, Indigo. Do you have any idea how complicated your life is going to be?”

“Huh?!” He nails his still-tied runners to the back of the closet and heaves his backpack on the floor.

“You kiss a girl and you’ll be a target for at least the next thirty years! Girls are complex, complicated creatures, son. There’s drama and emotions and expectations and jealousy and demands and game-playing and manipulation and guilt-trips and drama and emotions and expectations and… and…” I take a deep breath and wipe the foam and drool from my lips. “Don’t do it, son. Don’t be a slave to love!”

Indi gives a full-body shake and stomps to the kitchen to beat the “tale” off his brother.

“Trust me, I know. I’m a girl!”

So what do you do when your pre-adolescents think gob-swapping is a legitimate after-school activity? Hell if I know. But according to my husband, the “curiosity” kiss is really nothing to be concerned with.

“The boys are just curious,” he says without looking up from the paper. “I mean, there was no ‘over-the-sweater’ action or anything.”

“No over-the-sweater… what?” I throw myself on the floor and will myself to breath. “No over-the-sweater action? How would you know?”

“He told me, yesterday.”

“Indi told you about the kiss?” I couldn’t feel more left out if I was an Eskimo at a toga party.

“Ya, he asked me not to tell you because you get too…ummm… emotional?” He chooses his words carefully.

“Really.” I pull myself up from the kitchen tile and brush myself off. Got to give the kid some credit. Looks like he might have us girls figured out after all.