Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

Hepcat is in California visiting his mom and life is different whenever he’s away. How so? Smartmom has to be both good cop and bad cop.

She’s not used to being bad cop — but she’s learning. Oh, is she learning!

The Oh So Feisty One likes to do her math homework with Hepcat by her side and not having him home caused more than one meltdown.

“I don’t understand,” she screamed the other evening as Smartmom tried to explain how to find the common denominator for fractions.

Smartmom racked her brain. Ever so slowly, it came back. Smartmom may be a smart mom, but simple math can still flummox her.

Things got so bad that OSFO insisted she call Hepcat in California.

When he picked up the phone, he patiently explained how to do it. Still, OSFO was having a tough time. But thanks to Hepcat’s cross-country explanation, Smartmom figured out how to explain it to OSFO.

“I know how to explain this,” she told OSFO, who finally got the concept.

Teen Spirit hasn’t mentioned Hepcat much. That’s probably because he feels a little freer without his dad’s tough love of parenting (the 16-year-old Teen Spirit needs a lot of tough love).

Just about every morning while Hepcat was away, Teen Spirit feigned a real or imagined malady.

“I think I drank some curdled milk yesterday,” he told Smartmom clutching his stomach one morning.

“I am definitely coming down with something,” he told Smartmom on Friday morning, lying with his blanket over his head and the rain pouring down outside his window. “Can I stay home from school?”

Teen Spirit would never try such shenanigans if Hepcat were home.

“Don’t make me use the ice,” is what Hepcat would say if Teen Spirit was refusing to get out of bed in the morning. “Do you want me to get the weasels?”

That usually makes Teen Spirit pop out of bed and head for the shower faster than a speeding slacker.

But Teen Spirit knows that Smartmom is a world-class pushover. On more than one occasion, she had allowed him to stay home.

But she’s learned her lesson. He usually feels better by 3 pm. Much better. And then he has the nerve to ask if he can go out and see his friends. Grrr.

Smartmom may be a wuss, but she hates to be duped.

This week, Smartmom struggled against her pushover tendencies. She tried to channel Hepcat 3,000 miles away. “Don’t make me get the ice,” she whispered to herself. “Should I get the weasels?”

It worked. She felt emboldened by the fact that she was alone and she had to set down the law. Consequently, she and Teen Spirit had a huge fight on Friday morning. Smartmom wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“Get up NOW. You’re going to be late!” she screamed and she really meant it.

“Two more minutes,” he begged.

“No,” she said.

“Please” he pleaded.

“NO,” she said it so loud the upstairs and the downstairs neighbors probably heard her. Luckily no one complained.

Finally, Teen Spirit got out of bed and grumpily got into his skinny jeans, his father’s old leather aviator jacket, his grandfather’s wingtips and stormed out of the house.

Smartmom felt a mix of triumph and pain. She hates when Teen Spirit leaves the house that way (it probably reminds her of the door-slamming fights she had when she was an adolescent). No doubt, that’s why she lets Hepcat be the bad cop while she gets to be the sympathetic one.

Indeed, Hepcat’s absence is forcing Smartmom to have one heck of an insight. When he’s not around, she has to exercise the parts of herself that she doesn’t bother to face when he’s around. Like remembering how to do math problems and giving Teen Spirit a piece of her mind.

Clearly, Hepcat not only comes in handy when Smartmom can’t quite remember something mathematical, but at those more-important times when Smartmom doesn’t want to face her anger. When Hepcat is around, she need use only a fraction of her power — just the way she likes it, apparently.

After Teen Spirit left for school on Friday morning, Smartmom felt lightheaded. There was a tingling sensation in her body mixed with a true sense of power.

She was a toughie and it felt really, really good.

Teen Spirit might even have gotten to school on time