(I am about four years old and sitting in the back seat of my mom’s car as we drive somewhere. All of a sudden, I ask this gem.)
Me: “Mommy, what does ‘sex’ mean?”
(There is a long pause as my mom tries to figure out how to explain this to a four-year-old. Finally, she comes up with a response.)
Mom: “Well, why do you ask?”
Me: “Because there’s a piece of paper on the seat and it says, ‘Sex: M or F.’”
(Cue a sigh of relief from my mom.)
Our eldest son is extremely smart and sarcastic, is an avid movie fan, and loves puns. Not all of his romantic interests have been able to keep up with him and/or did not appreciate his… um… uniqueness. We knew his latest girlfriend was a keeper when the following happened.
We were discussing a movie that we felt had some technical mistakes. Our son said something about CGI effects and ended by exclaiming, “Even the toes were digital!”
His girlfriend immediately said, “All toes are digital.”
I don’t know if we laughed harder at her pun or at the look on our son’s face.
(I am walking down the street in a moderately busy tourist town. A family — consisting of a mother, a father, two young children, and a toddler in the mother’s arms — steps out of a shop and notices an ice cream parlor on the other side of the street. They stand there looking at it, and I overhear this, all delivered in different tones as if a conversation were taking place.)
Mother: “Ice cream…”
Child #1: “Ice cream?”
Child #2: “Ice cream!”
Mother: “Ice cream.”
Toddler: “Ice cweam.”
(There is a pause during which none of them speaks.)
Child #1: “Ice cream.”
Mother: *pause* “Ice cream.”
Child #2: “Ice. Cream.”
Mother: “Ice cream.”
(I just kept walking.)
I am standing in a long line for a roller coaster on a hot day. A lady takes an object out of her purse and passes it to her teenage son, who uses it, passes it on to two teenage daughters, and then to the husband, who each use it in succession. Finally, it goes back to the wife and back into her purse.
It’s a deodorant stick.
(I’m about four years old in this story. My mom is out shopping, so my dad’s in charge of watching me. I decide to draw in my room, and as I’m a relatively quiet child my dad doesn’t think much of it and starts watching TV. Sometime later, he sees me toddle over to the bathroom. When I don’t come out for several minutes, he comes to investigate… and finds me doodling on the wall.)
Dad: “[My Name], why are you drawing on the bathroom wall?”
Me: *nonchalantly* “I ran out of space in my room.”
(My father rushed to my room to find that, yes, I’d run out of drawing paper and scribbled all over my bedroom walls. After getting it cleaned up, my parents told me to ask for more paper if I ran out again, and taped a few sheets to my walls just in case. Moral of the story: never, ever trust a quiet toddler.)
