Maybe It Wasn't Too Soon After All

I realize I’m backtracking a little, but wanted to share something with you that happened last week. At the time, I thought it was funny, but we were leaving for vacation the next day and I just didn’t have a chance to type it up. In light of THE TALK I had with Brayden yesterday, it seems even more relevant to tell you about it now.

It was Fall Break here and my girlfriend Renee and I took our kids to a farm that had pumpkins, a petting zoo, story-time, hayrides, etc. A nice, family-oriented fall day. The county we were in didn’t appear to be on Fall Break themselves, as there were several busses and young, Pre-K-ish-looking groups there on field trips.

Before embarking on our wholesome, clean-cut adventure of wool spinning and tree climbing and baby chick observing, we herded our kids over to the Port-A-Potties located right next to a pen of sheep. None of my kids needed to go, but I did, so I told them to stand right there, and I stepped into one of the “facilities”.Pants down, balancing over the seat, and suddenly I hear, in an extremely loud, squealing voice ….. “Wow!!!! Look at the size of his wiener-dinger!!!” and shrill, hysterical laughter all around. Oh. My. Gosh. Those are **my** kids yelling about sheep anatomy!

I thought I was going to die of embarrassment, and felt torn between pulling up my pants as quickly as possible to get out there and hush them up, and just staying in the port-a-potty all afternoon, pretending like I had no idea whose kids they were. Realizing their comments and screeching were getting louder and wilder, with shouts of “Look at that! Look, right there!”, I hurried out of the john and rushed over to them ……

They were cracking up. I thought Kellen was going to burst he was laughing so hard. I looked over, to see the source of all the commotion ………… oh, my. That **was** a pretty impressive specimen ….. then I noticed it wasn’t a “wiener dinger” at all (we use such highly technical terms at our house) but actually another part of male anatomy. At that point I was worried other people would notice the ruckus my kids were causing with their pointing and laughing, or that they would traumatize Renee’s boys, who are younger, or scar the young kids in the Pre-K classes for life, so I quickly and quietly said, “Ya’ll, stop it. That is not his penis, those are his testicles. And we don’t talk about those in public. Even on a sheep.” And then I have to admit, as embarrassed as I am to confess this, I started giggling. Because come on. I was scolding my children for laughing at ginormous sheep testicles. Could life BE any more ridiculous????

Later that night, at the dinner table, of all appropriate places, they kids felt compelled to mention it to Blaine. Apparently it made quite an impression, is all I can say. But once again, I told them the dinner table was not the proper place for this discussion. Something along the lines of …. “It was just a sheep. It was just a part of his body. It’s not that big of a deal, ok?” and at that point I truly thought it was over.

So imagine how I felt when *after* dinner, I walked into the living room to hear Brayden whispering to Kellen: “Well, just imagine. An octopus has EIGHT of those testicles!!!”

“Brayden, honey” I said, knowing I had to discuss it whether I wanted to or not, “an octopus has eight TENTACLES, not eight testicles.”

Hmmmm. Maybe she and I should have had THE TALK some time ago?