You Know... Before

Imagine if you will, driving in the car with two boys and listening to Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me. They know the words, all the words. Even the, "She wears short skirts. I wear T-shirts" words. I wish I could explain why this is true, I can't.

Anyway, the lyric, provocative as it is, encourages Cooper to ask why girls wear t-shirts with skirts. Truthfully I'm relieved he asks this and not something about why girls wear short skirts. In my misguided wisdom I reply, "Skirts come from a long tradition rooted in the history of clothing. A long time ago all women and men wore robes, dresses and skirts. In some countries men wear skirts, still."

OK. Now, just ponder this for a minute. I make geeky if not entirely false proclamations like this all the time. My children do not even flinch. We begin listing the countries where men still wear what my children would consider a skirt and/or a dress. I didn't differentiate between sarongs and robes and kilts. If it wasn't bifurcated, I called it a skirt and listed it. So, naturally it was a discussion of India, Pakistan, various Asian and Arab countries, and Scotland.

The boys were roaring and moved right on to the next things they wanted to talk about. They leave me behind and chatter between them with little regard for me or the music I turn up until I hear something strange.

Cooper starts telling Mason that babies are born naked because they can't buy clothes on "the inside". Oh oh oh. I had to push this and begin a line of questioning that literally gets Cooper making all kinds of stuff up. At one point he tried to tell me that there was a closet inside the uterus (he said Mommy's tummy) for babies and that they didn't need to be born naked but parents liked them better that way (naked).

Finally, exhausted and exasperated he says, "Mom, I'm talking about a long time ago when people were naked and didn't have any money to buy clothes!"

Well Phew! Because I thought you were trying to tell me that I still had an entire wardrobe in my nether regions just waiting to get birthed.