Shannon said to me Friday afternoon, “Hmm. That’s weird. It’s like mother-daughter day or something.”

I looked at her like her blonde roots were showing. “And what time is everyone going to see ‘New Moon’?”

“Well, Lauren is going to the 9 o’clock show with her mom. Britney and her mom are going at 10.”

The light bulb still wasn’t going off.

“It’s mother-daughter day because mamas are using their teen daughters as reasons to go see ‘New Moon’ so we don’t look perverted,” I told her.

(Don’t judge. It’s not like women are the only ones who do this. My mom needed only to look at the poster of Raquel Welch in a loincloth to see why my dad volunteered to take my brother and me to see “One Million Years BC,” when I was a kid).

Shannon and I had tickets for Friday’s midnight showing of “New Moon,” the only one that wasn’t sold out.

I hadn’t seen 2 a.m. since I had to get up to let out the puppy Shannon was training.

This was the kind of sacrifice we mothers have to be willing to make for our daughters.

But if I have to be honest, I’ll admit that, yes, somewhere along the line, I joined the “Twi-hards,” fans of the “Twilight” series‚ vampire/werewolf/love stories.

Having read the books, I knew what happened in this second installment. But I was compelled to see the film version that stars many delicious, er, talented young actors. Shannon’s presence would make a good smokescreen for those mean-spirited people who like to refer to middle-aged women watching young men with hard bodies as “deviant.”

I’m insulted.

We defy the definition of deviant if millions of us are doing it, right?

I’m just sayin.’

Besides, most of the boys in that movie are of legal age in real life.