A Salad Topping & A Documentary Topic

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Sprouts: More than just a garnish.
Sometimes having a precocious kid is a health hazard. More specifically, sometimes having a precocious kid is a choking hazard.

We're sitting at the dining room table. He's doing his homework and I'm reading Sunset magazine. He looks over at a page with a picture of a salad with a garnish of sprouts on top.

"Mommy, those look like sperm."

Wha? Huh?! Cough, sputter, choke... Wait, do I choke or laugh? Dammit! Wait, breathe. Now, OK mom, time to put on the card-shark face and handle this.


"@, do you know what sperm are?"

"Yes, they're what start babies growing."

Crap, somehow I was holding out hope for sperm whale or something a little less on the side of human biology. No such luck.

"OK, yes. Where did you learn this?"

Dang it, he's eight! Eight years old! Do I really have to do this now?! Wait, he was using my phone to watch a Lego version of the Titanic movie on YouTube the other day. Did he watch something else? No. Crap. Tell me it's not my phone. Tell me it's NOT my phone...


"In the womb."

OK, this kid remembers things from when he was two. Like the songs a Beatles cover band played at a car show. Some details from even earlier. But this is extreme even for him. Isn't it? Try not to sound too dubious...

"The womb? You mean before you were born?"

"No, you're goofy. It was on television. At daddy's house. It's the name of a show. They showed everything about how babies start and are born."

Thankfully, I'm pretty certain his dad doesn't have the channels that would show EVERYTHING. But documentaries. Yep, that's my kid. Who needs cartoons when you can start working on your Master's degree in third grade?

"That sounds like a pretty interesting program."

"It was really interesting, but it kind of made me sad, too."

"Did it? What made you sad?"

"Yeah, I was sad that we didn't get to be born like that and, well, you know, N died."

"That would make me sad too, @."

Once again, my kid has the supreme talent of throwing seventeen emotional reactions into the space of three minutes.

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