Kidspeak

Our family spent last Sunday afternoon at my nephew's first birthday party. My sister-in-law wisely provided favors (a.k.a. items of distraction) for the children at the party. As is customary, my kids honed in on all things colorful and glowing. That's right, they went straight for those glow sticks/wands that they salivate over every time we pass the Target dollar section. What is so fascinating about a glowing stick (in the daytime, nonetheless), I'll never know. But the stakes were ratcheted up just a bit higher this time around. Dear sister-in-law didn't provide "just" glowsticks, she provided glow WANDS and glow TRIDENTS.

That's right, a trident. Hey, we'd just been to Disney World, we saw some mermen in The Little Mermaid show, I figured the kids would know what a trident was. I was mistaken. So we abandoned the vocabulary word of the day and just called them glow spears. The boys, ever excited to embrace something violent, were ecstatic with their "glowing" (yes, it was still daytime, so we were just assuming they were actually aglow) spears.

After the party, we headed home, tridents spears and wands in hand. The kids enjoyed playing with them, imagining the night to come when they could finally see if they glowed as advertised. Apparently Luke got a little tired of simply waving his spear/wand at the pretend bad guys so he started to disassemble his spear. When I turned around in my seat to see how the reassembly was going, the following conversation took place ...

Me: "Luke, where did your trident just go?"

Luke: "Moooooooom! It's a spirit!"

Me: "You mean spear. Well, where is it?"

Luke: "I don't know where it is."

Mom: "Well, you need to look for it or you won't get to see it glow tonight once it gets dark."

I turn around and there is a minute or two of quiet.

Luke: "Mom?"

Me: "What, buddy?"

Luke: "Mom, there's some spirit poking out of my pants."

At this point Matt, who is driving, starts laugh-snorting (I don't have to explain what that is, right?) at the inappropriateness of Luke's comment. Men.

Me: "Well buddy, you'd better get that spirit out of your pants quickly if you still want it to see some more action tonight."

I know I'm inappropriate, but it's so hard to help yourself when they have no idea what you're talking about.