My mother never...

My mother never worked for the government as some sort of secret agent. It is just not possible. My older brother totally made that up to pull my leg when I was younger and I'll admit that I did believe it then. I believed everything my older brother told me because he was older. I know now though that most of his stories were lies, especially the ones about our mother being some super-spy. There's just no way that our house-cleaning, meal-cooking, community-volunteering mother could have ever done anything more violent than swat away our slobbery dog, Wags.
All those stories of the female secret agent, that expert of espionage known as the Specter (aka, our mother) make me laugh now as I look back on them. Some of her missions were just absurd, like this one time, she supposedly had to scale the Eiffel Tower in order to reach the top platform undetected in order to steal back the President's wife's special ring from the jewel thief who had stolen it in the first place. She almost made it when the unfortunate occurrence of a sneeze happened on the part of the thief. As he went to wipe his nose with his perfumed Parisian handkerchief, he happened to glance down and see our mother as she was just about to reach for the ring, and a terrific struggle ensued. Finally, our mother appeared triumphant (mother always won in big brother's stories) and the thief went to jail.
Mom has never been to Paris though. She doesn't even know any words in French or what Notre Dame is. Dad always said that he and mother had been planning on going to Paris for their honeymoon, but Mom's job had called her away for a week or so (come to think of it, I don't think anyone ever told me where she went…) and they had to postpone their trip. By that time, they had to change their plans because of some recent theft outbreaks in Paris. Supposedly the thief had been caught, but mom and dad wanted to play it safe. A trip to Paris may be in order for next year, promises my mother. For some reason, my parents seem to think that eight years was enough time to wait for the situation in Paris to clear up (ya think?).
Oh, another story that always cracked me up was when mom the "secret agent" had to go to the Amazon Rainforest to rescue someone's kidnapped son. Apparently, she had to chase the kidnapper up and down the Rio de la Plata (I thought my brother had made up that name, but I checked a map and it was there… it amazes me just how much effort my brother put into making these stories believable by putting in the names of real people and places) and even had to fight off a crocodile that the kidnapper had been starving so that it would be all the more ferocious when mother had to fight it. Somehow she made it out with barely a scratch (now that I think about it, mom never told me where she got that crocodile tooth from…) and returned the stolen child to his worried parent. Mom? A crocodile wrestler? She can barely keep Wags off of her when she comes home from work.
How could any of those outrageous stories be true? Mom says she's never left the U.S… although, that's probably what an undercover-spy would say. It's not possible though. Mom just still practices karate to keep in shape, not because she's going to have to kick bad-guy butt. All our top-of-the-line electronic equipment in the house are just bonuses from dad's hard work at the electronics store… right? Mom never worked for the government as some secret agent… right?