There are some things that I see on tv that just simply move me.

No, I’m not talking about the story about how America’s best and brightest don diapers for love because, really, nothing says love, love, love, like sitting in your own pee for a 900 mile drive, halfway across the country, to, at the very least, accost your perceived rival whilst leaving your kids and your cuckolded spouse behind at home. Oh how I long for for the days when all I had to worry about was some little talentless hussy grabbing the headlines for driving around without her drawers but now, our heroes? In diapers? Wow. But really, though, that to which I’m actually referring is a commercial. The fantasy of it has nearly taken over my life.

Perhaps you’ve seen it—it’s for a grocery store. In it, a young boy approaches his mother and asks for her help baking a cake, a heart-shaped cake, for someone special. The images flash of the two of them, mother and child, in the kitchen, stirring fluffs of flour into the air, watching the cake in the over as it bakes, putting together then icing a gorgeous heart-shaped strawberry cake as the mom digs for details as to who will be the lucky recipient of her son’s baked confection affections. “Should we put her name on it?” “Does she know you like her?” The kid, obviously a man in training, avoids providing answers.

The next scene shows the two in the car in front of the school. The kid hands his mom the cake to unbuckle his seatbelt and gather his books. He opens the car door and bolts towards the school. “Wait,” the mom yells, still holding the heart-shaped delight, “you forgot your cake!”

And the kid just turns, smiles back at his mom, then runs towards the school. At which point I burst into tears. Every. Single. Time.

So this past Sunday when my son and I were watching the Super Bowl pre-game (the one that lasted for 17 days during which we confirmed that Stevie Nicks still can’t sing and that she seems to be channeling an ailing farm animal while looking more and more like Sally Struthers’ fatter sister who someone forgot to tell is no longer hot and who, in fact, is overdue a haircut by just about 14 years), THAT commercial came on.

Now this is the kind of set-up that women love, the one with a built-in guilt-trip; we don’t have to say anything because the message is right there: you ain’t treating us right. So when I saw the familiar opening, I poked my son’s arm and pointed towards the tv. “I love this commercial,” was all I had to say.

He sat silently watching the commercial until it faded to the next and when he turned to look at me, the tears spilling down my cheeks, I saw that his face was squished up like I’d just farted a six day old egg. “Wha--?”

He laughed, “That’s just creepy, Mom—that kid has a thing for his own mother—that ain’t right!” And then he collapsed on the floor, holding folded arms over his stomach, rolling in his own mirth.

I did exactly what they taught us at the Wal-Mart school of parenting: I took off my shoe, threw it at him, and screamed, “You little asshole—you’re going to ruin that commercial for me!” He responded by laughing much, much harder.

He did redeem himself, however. And he did so almost innocently. Perhaps even accidentally.

You see, just a few minutes into the second half of the game, about the time the entire country wondered if the game could be more boring (I think even Archie Manning had fallen asleep), my son said, “I want my hair to be curly.” I looked at his thick, shiny, straight, strawberry-blond hair that falls halfway to his waist, the hair that, before he was born, I envisioned would be Bozo-red and Bozo-curly.

“Not going to happen, D. You’ve got beautiful hair, though.”

“But I want my hair to be curly like yours though.” One small step for my man-child, one giant step towards redemption.

“Well, you should be happy with what you’ve got. You’re very lucky. Seriously, how many times do you get stopped and told you have gorgeous hair?”

“Can’t you make it curly, though?”

I didn’t have to think long because, well, I don’t even own a set of curlers. “There’s really nothing I can do outside of braiding it, giving it a little wave here and there once it dries,” not quite telling him that he’d look like some slutty little mall rat from the 80’s when I was finished.

“Ok,” he said.

I spent the next hour going ‘round and ‘round his head, braiding tiny strands of wet hair until he looked like a sci-fi star from the favorite tv show of that homebound basement dweller who lived next to you as a kid, the guy who thought he was so very cool because he made up his own secret code and had his own secret handshake that he’d show to no one and thus, he had no one to whom to write letters or with whom to shake hands.

Dylan’s hair, however, was too thick, too shiny, too soft, too perfect to stay braided—the hair just kept spilling out. “So,” I ventured, “have you thought about how long you’re actually going to grow your hair?”

He didn’t even hesitate, blurting it out as though he’d been giving it a good bit of thought, like the kid on the commercial who has been holding back the very secret that every mother wants to hear: “Have you ever heard of Locks of Love?”

I knew I’d crush him if I tried to squeeze my love into him with a hug, so instead, I told him yeah, I’d heard of it.