Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Nutty Joys of Little Boys

Several posts ago, I introduced you to our sweet neighbor, who I came precariously close to introducing to the "D" word to. Well, he's back. Sweet as ever, but a little tongue-tied.

This was his breathy pronouncement, as he ran through the front door calling my name:

"Mrs. Nowell? The Babe is caught in the tree and is squashing his nuts."

Oh.My.GARSH.

Thank goodness he wasn't in the same room because I was doubled over, trying not to accidentally urinate in my jeans, while silently laughing.

I walked outside with our hero and found Babilicious straddling a tree branch. He seemed non-chalant, frankly. He started smiling when he saw me and said "LOOK! I can climb the tree now!"*

Sweet neighbor looked at me and said, with a sheepish, totally adorable look on his face "I didn't know what to call it." He kind of shrugged his shoulders, in a gesture I interpreted as "I hope like heck I'm not in trouble for saying "nuts" to you."

Since this little guy obviously was struggling with medical terminology and I have no experience AT ALL in this area, I offered my pat "down south" suggestion: "privates"

"That sounds worse to me." Strike one.

"Well, what other suggestions can you come up with?" Since we didn't agree on my "safe" terminology, I certainly wasn't going to offer up "balls", "roundies", or "squishees".

"I like the sound of "bad spot"." Well, OK there, cowboy. A first for me, for sure, but I guess I can try to remember this.

Frankly, I'm more likely to be able to identify with a term like "nuts", but if this phrase helps the neighbor kids unabashedly announce that one of my kids has put the family jewels into a perilous situation, I'm cool.

That's just the way we roll around here, people. Love us or leave us.



*Unspoken reality: we're in for another season of hospital bills.

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