I fear that the level of maturity in our home has plummeted to a new low. Yes, I realize that I have three young beautiful beasties who are all expected to embody the term "immature" by virtue of their ages, but I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about Peter the Great and myself.
The scene:
We're having a lovely family breakfast, just the 5 of us and two dogs who had just eaten but never seem to be so full that they won't linger on the boundaries and beg with big eyes and perked ears. And Alice the Wondercat, but she is too dignified to beg. She just chats incessantly until she gets what she wants. Brilliant and adorable technique.
Another creature in my house that talks incessantly is my brilliant, beautiful oldest daughter Wendy. She has a word quotient of 1.5 million she needs to meet every day, although I'm not quite sure who she reports to on that. She began talking about 3 minutes after she was born and basically hasn't stopped since. After 11 years of living with this chatterbox, I've grown accustomed to tuning her at least 75% out since she tends to take a while to make a point. I'm well aware that many of you reading this are rolling your eyes and thinking something along the lines of "like mother, like daughter." Well done.
This morning, Wendy was chatting along like a champion, and I was only about one-quarter of the way through my first cup of coffee which means I had her tuned 98% out. It wasn't until I heard her say, "And then he kicked him in the balls" that I quickly gave her my full attention. It's hard to describe just how I felt in that moment. For one thing, we don't call them "balls" in our house. It's not for any reason other than I don't think we refer to that particular part of the male anatomy at all, which only added to the shock factor. It's not my favorite substitute term for the testicles; however, it's adequately descriptive with just enough crassness to make it more than a little unbalancing to hear it come out of the perfect, sweet mouth of my Swedish babe with the blonde hair, giant blue eyes, and sprinkling of freckles across her chirpy little nose.
I was hit full-force in the face with the fact that my angelic daughter truly is staring puberty right in the mouth and that, while I prefer to think she's still innocent beyond corruption, the world is creeping into her head and her vernacular and probably is way more in than I'd care to admit. What should have been a moment of mourning for her quickly disappearing childhood followed by a lesson on proper table speak was usurped by the immaturity I mentioned above. Peter and I looked at each other and dissolved into uncontrollable fits of laughter. It was just too much to process, and quite frankly, it was hilarious. The disconnect between her normal, lovable awkwardness and the frankness with which she said "balls" was comedic perfection.
Like I said before, we don't use the term "balls," so my other two, still slightly more innocent and/or clueless, didn't understand what Wendy had said or why their parents had turned into hyenas over breakfast. I still don't know what the story was leading up to one kid taking a really low, cheap shot at another kid, but Titus, my baby, my sweet, sweet son was giving his oldest sister his utmost attention. After giving Peter and me a sideways, confused glance, he wanted to get back to the story because he needed clarification on one very important point. He asked Wendy, "Were they squishy balls or hard balls?"
Well, that did us in. We declared breakfast over and sent our confused children on their way. I know every moment of growing up isn't going to be this fun, but I will draw on this memory for a while whenever I need a little giggle. Balls, balls, balls!
