Advice

One of the great things about our wonderful pool is that kids of all ages mingle. In particular, it is a safe place for tweens to lightly mingle with the the teens and for pre-teens to hang with the tweens and for younger kids to practice being pre-teens... all the way on down (the babies chill with the toddlers in the sandbox). The downside of this is that the younger ones tend to pick up behavior and vocabulary from the older ones.

Indeed, there has been a rash of "vocabulary" this summer.

One evening as we were leaving the pool in twilight, Baby Monster said very solumly, "Mom, if I ever die...if I'm, like, shot, or die for any reason...(my sister would be dead too, but I don't know how she dies)... If i die, you should have a threesome."

Uh....

I paused to absorb that sentiment while I got in the car. Meanwhile, Big Girl Monster verified that he did actually know the definition of threesome and that we were all on the same page.

After I'd regained (s0me of ) my composure, I asked, "Well, Son, why would you need to be dead?"

And he answered without missing a beat, "Oh, if I was alive, I wouldn't let THAT happen! No way. Uhuhn not MY Mom!"

Another night, Big Girl Monster announced, unbidden, during dinner, "Mom, if you ever work as a pole dancer, you're going to have to shave your armpits."

Alas, another pool season has ended and our evenings just aren't the same.