So the other day, I was talking to Teenybop. She was feeling a little lonely, and a lot bored in the wake of the day before when she'd had my cousin's little son to play with. So it goes somewhat like this:
TEENY: I'm bored. I wish there was somebody to play with, Mommy.
ME: I'll play. What do you want to do?
TEENY: No! Not you ... I want a friend to play with ...
--and then she drops the bomb --
TEENY: Can we go get a baby?
ME, gagging as I try to reattach my lower jaw, as it is now laying on the floor between my feet: Huh? We can't just "go get" a baby. Remember how we talked about babies, and we talked about when a baby is in the mommy's tummy, it has to grow and grow until it comes out? Like you did, remember?
TEENY rubs a spot on her stomach, the same place where she knows there is a scar on MY stomach from the c-section that brought us to this point, and says: Yeah I 'memer. And I'm havin' a baby in my tummy, and when it grows out I can play with it.
-- I feel the need to correct this belief, lest her preschool teachers think she was raised by morons --
ME: Uh, Teenybop? You don't have a baby in your tummy right now. You're too little to get one, because you have to get married before you can get a baby in your tummy...
TEENY: To a boy?
ME, terrified that there's already something wrong with her preferences that I don't yet know about (no offense): Yeah, that's usually how it works, baby.
TEENY: But I don't wanna marry a boy, Mommy. Boys are yucky!
-- and she makes this prissy face as if to say, "Come on Mom, don't you know anything?" --
ME: Why are boys yucky? Some boys are nice.
TEENY: But Mommy ... *sigh* ... boys have's a beard on them's chin."
-- And as she looks utterly exasperated, she rubs her chin as if she's got a beard herself, and I can't help but laugh even now that it's been a few days ... because her daddy has a goatee. --
It kinda takes me back to the day's when I was growing up. I have a very hairy father ... it seems that when he was about 18 all the hair on his head started to migrate, heading south down his shoulders, back, chest, stomach, his neck ... And now? He's got a head you could wax, and a body you could shave weekly for donations to Locks of Love. They could fix that stuff up, give some little boy a great head of black curly hair, LOL.
But the point is, I hated it. I swore that hairy men were just "ick" and I wasn't having anything to do with one. I rejoiced in every guy I was ever with, loving his lack of excess body hair. None on the chest, none on the belly, definitely none on the back and shoulders.
And now I sit back and laugh because one of the best I've ever had in my life, and very likely one of the greatest loves of my life ... is hairy in all of those places. And it's only the start, he's only 24.
