Britney? Normal?

Spears guests on How I Met Your Mother, playing a normal-ish, if horny, receptionist

By BILL HARRIS

The term "how I met your mother" sounds like the start of a scary story that Kevin Federline will tell his kids someday.

The mother he would be referring to, of course, is Britney Spears. And as coincidence would have it, Spears will make a guest-appearance on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother this Monday (CBS, plus E! affiliates in Canada).

The episode is titled Ten Sessions, and if that isn't a straight line about Britney needing professional help, what is?

Anyway, as Ted (Josh Radnor) continues his quest to find the woman who one day will be his wife, he pursues his beautiful dermatologist Stella (played by Sarah Chalke from Scrubs).

While Stella declines repeated requests for a date, her office receptionist Abby, played by Spears, becomes smitten with Ted.

Series co-creator Carter Bays told Extra recently, "Britney landed in our laps." Wow, literally?

Okay, no more cheap shots.

It was Spears' representatives who approached the show, however, and not the other way around.

Clearly, with all the mental and physical issues the former pop-music princess has displayed in alarmingly public fashion during the past couple of years, she has been yearning to rehabilitate her image by doing something more "normal."

Spears seems willing to poke fun at her own reputation. In a well-circulated clip from Spears' How I Met Your Mother appearance, her character asks, "Can we have sex and then go shopping?" To which Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, replies enthusiastically, "I like you!"

There were other options for Britney, though.

Had she looked north to Canada, her foray into playful normality could have been acted out on any of the following programs:

- Little Mosque on the Prairie -- Britney arrives in Mercy, which leaves token cartoonish right-winger Fred (played by Neil Crone) in a quandary: Who is more of a threat to his sensibilities, those zany Muslims or the slutty Ms. Spears?

- Degrassi: The Next Generation -- Hey, who's the new kid who showed up all stumbly and three-quarters naked at the talent show?

- The Border -- Britney gets stopped trying to enter Canada. She claims she's a singer on a concert tour. Prove it, says Mike (played by James McGowan). Britney breaks into song. He still isn't convinced.

- Corner Gas -- Four words: Love interest for Hank.