Now that Michelle Obama‘s highly anticipated memoir Becoming is out, we’re all getting an intimate look at the former First Lady’s time in the White House. One of the book’s most candid scenes comes when Obama describes the very parent-y way she and Barack embarrassed their oldest daughter, Malia, just before her prom.
Obama writes that in the spring of 2015, Malia revealed that she wanted to go to prom with “a boy she kind of liked.” She had only one super-relatable request of her parents on the big night at Washington, D.C.’s Sidwell Friends High School: “Just be cool please, OK?”
The Obama’s apparently did as they were told, but maybe they were a little too cool.
“On the appointed evening, her date arrived in his car, clearing security at the southeast gate of the White House, following the path up and around the South Lawn by which heads of state and other visiting dignitaries normally arrived, and then gamely — bravely — walking into the Dip Room dressed in a black suit,” Obama remembers in the book. She and Barack took an elevator down with Malia to met the boy, and Obama shares that to her daughter’s mortification, “I was barefoot, and Barack was in flip-flops.”
They had arranged for Malia’s date to drive, an exception since Malia would normally be accompanied by Secret Service. Still, Obama writes, a security detail would “basically ride the boy’s bumper all the way to the restaurant they were going for dinner before the dance.”
“By my reckoning, we did manage to play it cool, though Malia still laughs, remembering it all as a bit excruciating,” she writes.
It’s such a mom moment that shows how deeply personal Obama gets in Becoming. In the book she opens up about several other intimate experiences, including suffering a miscarriage and experiencing fertility issues.
If you’re dying to hear more but can’t get your hands on the memoir quite yet, check out our review here.
MORE: Michelle Obama Reveals She Had a Miscarriage and Underwent IVF With Both Daughters