Remember Kindergarten Cop? Remember that scene where the young boy announces to the extremely out of his element Arnold Schwarzenegger that "boys have a penis and girls have a vagina."
It was hilarious and horrifying at the same time for our parents. That kid was not their kid, and it was a movie after all. I was safe in my cocoon of "private parts," "wee-wee," and "pee-pee".
Fast forward to today, and I have now become a parent. But I have decided to leave the rules of my youth behind and take parenting in a new approach. Yep, I decided to teach my children proper anatomy terms for their goods.
Now, I know some will just shake their heads at this. And some will be "yep, same at our house." And either is ok. The main gist of this post is not about which method is right or wrong. It is the full scope of the unspoken rule that, upon entering parenthood, you are required at some point during this ride to be utterly and thoroughly embarrassed.
This rule applies to all parents. Dad's need not be excluded. Hey, us mom's can't have ALL the fun. Dad's need some of the goodness that goes along with everything classy kid like.
But, for today, my embarrassment remains my own. No dad around to share in this with me. And, that's ok. I take full responsibility for this brand of embarrassment.
I know, right now this seems all kind of random. And, maybe it is. I am pretty random at times. And, this blog is titled "Random Ramblings". But, I assure you I do have a point to this post.
So my kids are fully aware of the proper anatomy terms for their body parts. This has never caused any issues...yet!!!!
Enter a grocery day. This particular grocery day landed on a Wednesday. Wednesday's in my house means my daughter is home with me and not at school. She faces the difficulty of having verbal apraxia. But, I can assure you, there was no apraxia holding her back this day.
Lately my little princess has been extremely interested in labeling...specifically labeling body parts. Thus far her proclamations of said body parts has been reserved for the sanctuary we will call home. Our entire household is now fully aware of who is a boy and who is a girl and what makes it so thanks to this little angel.
This day of grocery shopping has for some reason inspired my daughter, light of my life, sweetest of sweet, innocence of all innocent to decide she miraculously wants to talk to someone other than her household, teachers, therapists, or friends. She has decided to dust of her vocal cords for strangers.
It might seem like the fact that when I got to the checkout lane the store was bustling with so much noise you could barely hear the scanner beeping your items as the cashier ran it across. This particular moment, all that noise proved to be no match for what my daughter had in store.
As she is carefully watching the cashier ring up our groceries she looks puzzled. I'm not quite sure what is causing those wheels to turn. But then she decides to open her mouth.
"Are you a girl or boy?"
A little embarrassed, but not overly I explain that the cashier is a lady. But I understand her confusion because the cashier had very short hair. So I feel like I can just shrug this off as a little girl not realizing it is possible for girls to desire short hair. She would quietly accept this and continue on her merry unassuming way.
Wrong!!! I was so wrong!!! And when I say I was wrong, I mean it in a BIG way!!!
"So you have a vagina like me!!!"
Remember that so loud grocery store that you could barely hear your groceries being rung up that I told you about? Yeah, there is now dead silence throughout the entire grocery store. You can't even hear the whir of the freezers.
To add insult to injury, cause it isn't enough for not only my daughter to announce her similar body parts to the cashier and the eerily silent grocery store that was once buzzing with annoying too loud chatter, I now have every head within my vision turned towards me. And they aren't turned towards me like that deer in the headlights look you see some people with as they drive by a crash to see what's going on. Now, I got the glaring looks of utter disapproval.
I think it's worth mentioning that I don't believe this disapproval was at the fact that my daughter knows her anatomy, and clearly knows it well, but more so that she decided to inform the entire Northern half of the United States, or at least the entire population of said grocery store that she was well versed in said anatomy.
And so I nervously laughed it off, paid my bill, and I may have even sprinted out of the grocery store. In fact, I may or may have not started shopping at a completely different grocery store altogether. Actually, I didn't even have to go that far. The store I happened to be at that day was not my usual store. So, thankfully not too much had to be done on my part other than the sprinting to my car.
And with that moment I was reminded of the singular rule of parenting: You must be embarrassed by your children.
It is with this rule that I encourage you to remember to NEVER watch what you say around your kids. Because honestly, the utter humiliation and later gut wrenching laughable moment is totally worth your supposed child rearing faux pas.
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