Kidslations

A couple of years ago, Young Son comes home from school and blurts out excitedly

"Hey Mom! You know the guys with no backbones? We learned about where they live."

I'm thinking, like, what in the hell could he possibly be talking about?!? After a moment of frantic kidslation, it occurred to me that they had been learning about invertebrates.

Kidslation: "Mother, today we studied the habitats of invertebrates."

There was a time several years ago when the family unit was playing Balderdash, where you invent definitions to unusual words to bluff the other players. Lovely Daughter was about 10, I think.

The word: 'ophecleide.'

Her definition: "A snail that lives off of SweetTarts."

We laughed ourselves silly and the poor kid just couldn't figure out how we guessed hers was not the real definition.

Here's a Lovely Daughter Classic Moment from a few years earlier: One night, she was drowsily telling me about her evening with the babysitter.

"Mom, you know that talking hand on TV? We ate it's food...."

After several moments of total befuddlement, I got it! The babysitter served Hamburger Helper.

Then there's my other most (read: least) favorite game of all time: the Instant Momslation Game. As in "Mom, what's a ______?" That phrase strikes terror in my heart. It's usually played in lightening round fashion, often in public.

Lovely Daughter Classic Moment: LD and pal, age 12 or so, are sitting in the back seat of the car. We pull into the gas station and Hubby jumps out. The girls immediately lean forward. Lovely Daughter whispers:

"Mom! What's a dildo??"

GAK! I actually though my heart had stopped. Slowly, as my field of vision cleared, it dawned on me that I only had to answer the freakin' question, not explain the care and feeding usage of the thing. The answer popped into my mind like the single clear tone of a silver bell.

"It's a plastic penis."

Case closed. That's all they wanted to know.

Young Son is just now starting to ask those questions about babies and eggs and external genitalia and such. I really think I'm getting too old for this. I think this time I'm going to go buy a book.