They warn you about these things in Marriage School. However unlikely it may seem, someday, you and your beloved might – just might – disagree on how to squeeze the toothpaste. Or whose turn it is to take out the garbage. Or whether to go to his mom’s or yours for Christmas.

We got all that stuff down, baby. We buy separate toothpastes (mostly because I hate the taste of Aim and that’s all he’ll use). Both of us take out the garbage depending on who’s the first to notice we’re about to be declared a Superfund site. And since his birthday is on Christmas, we just sit back and let the moms come to us.

Ah, but now we come to the minor issues. Pun intended.

Is it OK to let Junior pierce his eyebrow? Can Sis hitchhike to Homecoming with a gangbanger named Dawg?

More to the point, how should we handle the realization that Slightly Older Princess has been forging her father’s signature in her classroom planner for the past several weeks?

Should we get all Dictorial and Draconian, like Mom likes to do, putting her on bread and water for a week and making her clean out all the window tracks with a Q-tip? Mom thinks that would build character and lessen the likelihood of a repeat offense. But then, Mom is Mean and tends to worry that letting a single toe go out of line means she’ll someday be called to bail her Princesses out of the pokey for trying to burn down City Hall. Dad, whom Mom sometimes secretly thinks has all the disciplinary character and training of a six-week-old beagle (supplementary evidence here), is a little less stressed about the whole thing and not as likely to break out the Q-tips.

But it was Dad’s signature our little con artist chose to forge, and Dad who found the evidence. And in order for parents to present a united front, Mom can’t always be The Enforcer.

So Mean Mom held her breath, gritted her teeth and left Beagle Dad in charge of the sanctions.

“How’d it go with the planner?” Mean Mom asked the next day when she came home from work.

“It’s handled,” Dad replied.

Mean Mom, in spite of seeing no evidence of any specific punishment and a distinct lack of Q-tip cleaning, is biting her tongue and saying no more.

Sometimes, you just have to let Father Know Best.