“Hey, mommy, guess what?” my daughter asks, holding my hand as we walk home from school.
“What’s that sweetie?”
“When I had a turn at playing Simon Says with the girls, I made everyone laugh by telling them to touch their vaginas.”
It’s as if the music came to a screeching halt at a nightclub.
“Uh…uhm…what did you just say?” I gulp down the lump in my throat and look around to see if any other parent just heard what my child said a bit too loudly to me.
“Yeah, you can really make people laugh a lot when you tell them to touch their vagina.”
Oh dear Lord, I think. Did she really say that? Did my daughter really get the girls in her class to touch their private parts during a friendly game of Simon Says?
“So…uh…did the teacher happen to see this?” I ask, begging for the answer to be no. Please let it be no.
“Nah, she was telling some boys not to hit each other.”
All I can think of in that moment is how much I am grateful that little boys like to smack the life out of each other at recess.
After a few minutes of trying to get my breath back, I begin the talk with her about how we don’t use our private parts as a way to make people laugh and then attempt to answer the many “why” questions she asks following that decree.
But in the end, she is smiling and laughing about going to school, and if you followed my adventures I wrote about for The Washington Post, you’ll know that’s quite an accomplishment.
So I’m thinking, heck, if it takes a group of girls all touching their privates to have a great day, I’ll take it. But man I hope that tomorrow they let someone else lead the game. Or at least I hope the boys keep smacking each other so the teacher doesn’t figure it out anytime soon.
