It Came Without Warning

*The following post will have strange punctuation interspersed in certain words to avoid getting sicko hits from search engines. Enjoy my attempt at subterfuge.*

Dude. Seriously. I think they should schedule time for The Talk. Like, as soon as the kid is born, you get a schedule. It has things like, "Will walk for first time," and "Will utter first intelligible word," so you can plan and be ready for some of the bigger ones. But you know, like around the age of...oh...10 or 12 or 47, you can schedule The Talk. So you can plan for it. So you can have some rehearsed sound bites that don't include, "Well...uh...um...I uh...heh heh..." like some giggling 8th grader telling his little brother The Facts.

I don't even know how it happened. I didn't even see it coming. I'm sitting here wondering how it even came about. I can't remember the sequence of conversation that precipitated The Talk. But I was sitting here at the computer, having just gone to the website of my son's future school. Lil' Bro was on the guest bed in my office, being a ghost under the blue floral sheets. And next to the Blue Floral Ghost was Pokemon Boy, hanging over the edge of the bed, upside down, feet in the air, chatting away. I believe the boys were discussing the possibilities of Lil' Bro marrying Pokemon Boy's future principal, having seen her picture on the website and uttering "Ooooohhhh...priddy!"

Oh wait...now it's all coming back. So Lil' Bro starts saying how he's going to marry Pokemon Boy's future principal. Pokemon Boy wisely points out the disparate age difference. Lil' Bro is undeterred. Pokemon Boy says, "Besides, she has a husband." "She does?" I ask. "Well, she has a job. Everyone who has a job is married." Very interesting information, this. Apparently, as soon as my divorce is finalized, I will lose my job. They continue on with their debate. I'm pretty sure that Lil' Bro is still pretty set on marrying the future principal. Because, according to his four year old logic, he will be RICH. I didn't turn to look, but the way that he said "rich" makes me think he was rubbing his hands together and making a very "mwah ha ha ha" face. Pokemon Boy said, "You'll be rich?" Lil' Bro explained, "Well, if I marry her, I will get money from her and I will be rich!" [I am thinking that my future ex had a very similar conversation with some of his friends way back in 1996. But I digress.]

But in pointing out that not all working people have to be married, somehow that got Pokemon Boy on the subject of, "Well, you have to be married to have kids." Yes, well, you'd like to think so. And being the oh so open and honest mom that I am, I opened this topic for further discussion. Because I'm also oh so stupid. Did I mention that? So I explained that not all people that have kids are married. I told him that, ideally, yes, it's best to be married when you have kids because raising kids is really a job that takes two people to help each other. That point was lost on Pokemon Boy who was already fixated on the first part of my statement. "But wait," asks he. "Don't you need an e.g.g from the woman and a s.p.e.r.m from the man?" True. But you don't have to be married to have that happen. "So you can use a stranger's s.p.e.r.m?" This is the point at which I realized I had unwittingly entered into The Talk. There was no backing out now. And all points of travel from here on in lead to just one thing: the robot from Lost In Space flailing all limbs and yelling, "Danger! Danger Will Robinson!!"

I go on to explain how some people don't always get married but live together. And being the morally upright idiot that I am, I very lamely attempt to throw in my bit about how that's not ideal and is fraught with risk but he wasn't even listening. His mind was still churning on the whole e.g.g and s.p.e.r.m issue. I think he was ok with accepting that unmarried couples might procreate. But...

"So how does the s.p.e.r.m get together with the e.g.g anyway?"

[Insert frozen smile combined with deer in the headlights look here]

My tact with delicate subjects and my boys has always been to present it as fact. Or more as matter of fact. Don't treat it as taboo. Don't treat it as dirty. Just explain things as if I was explaining dinosaurs or how to split the atom or something. And that works when they're asking simple questions like "Where does the baby grow?" that you can answer with very vague words like "womb" or "baby growing sack" or something. You toss a benign sounding word at them and they're bored and moving on to spread even more Pokemon cards around the house because they just realized there was still a spot of carpet visible to the naked eye.

But I knew I was about to try to totally vague and benign my way through a very delicate subject. I was going to try to describe The Act with words such as may be found in a two year old's board book. Yah. Good luck with that. Let me know how that works out for you, will you?

I won't put the whole conversation here because the punctuation to keep perverts from getting here would make it unreadable. But I described the act very blandly, trying to keep my poker face steady. But Pokemon Boy has - as he tells it - a super ectoplasmic mind. Which he uses to convey "I'm wikkid smart." So he asked all the questions you'd expect someone to ask. I mean, if you try to tell an electrical engineer that you built a robot out of some metal and wires, you think they'll settle for that? Exactly.

So while Blue Floral Ghost entertained himself by getting more and more entwined in the guest bed sheets, I had this monumental conversation with Pokemon Boy. It was so hard not to laugh. It was just so completely out of a sit-com.

I shudder to think of the counseling my boys will need when I'm done raising them.

Dude. Seriously. It came without warning.