My wife works weekends 3rd shift , so usually I'm taking care of my 2 sons while my wife sleeps. Today I put my 2 year old down for his nap. This gave me the opportuniuty to go out to the landfill to get rid of the old bushes and brush my wife pulled up from the backyard. Also we accumulated a nice collection of cardboard which had to go. So I get my 4 year old ready and head outside to load up the suv.
I start breaking down the boxes in the garage, while my son starts pretending to be a battlemech in the front yard. For those that don't know what battlemech's are, they are huge robots that weigh around 30 to 60 tons and stand 4 to 6 stories high. My son went crazy over them when he was 3 by watching me play the Mechassualt video game on my XBOX. Ever since then, he likes to pretend to bet a huge battlemech, moves, sounds and all. It gets weird stares from people time to time, but that's the fun of being a child. I get done with the cardboard and call him to come with me to the backyard so I can bag the bushes and brush.
I finally get done bagging the stuff in the backyard and hauls all 4 bags to the front to load in the suv. While I'm putting the bags in, my son start going to his question phase, mainly again about battlemechs.
"Daddy, what's this battlemech called?" He describes it by taking his right hand and makes it into a fist but lets the thumb and pinky stick straight out. He then takes that hand, places it on his ear so the pinky points straight and thumb points up. That is supposed to represent a huge shoulder mounted cannon.
"That's called Thor, buddy," I tell him. "Oh," he says.
"Daddy, what's this battlemech called?" He describes this one by taking his hands and cover both his ears so his elbows now point straight out. This represents a missle battery that is on either side of the pilots cockpit.
"That's a Mad Cat," I answer. "Oh," he says.
Now, while he is asking me these questions, I'm not really paying much attention. This is only the 1,457,789,564th time he's asked me this. However....
"Daddy, what's an erection?"
"Uh, buddy... how about I tell you about that when we get in the suv.... uh OK?"
"Ok, daddy."
So my mind is thinking how am I going to explain this to a 4 year old. How do I bring this down to a childs level? But I'm wondering, where did he hear this? At daycare? I don't think he's heard it at home either...
"Daddy, you know when you go to your office, you get an erection."
What!!!! I work in telecommunications managing connections between central offices and provide bandwidth utilization reports for our DSL network. It a nice job, but it doesn't get me that excited...
But then my brain kicks in..."Buddy, are you talking about when mommy takes you to Chuck E Cheese and you tell her to go this way and that way in the parking lot... are you talking about.... directions?"
"Yes, when you go this way and that way... what is a direction?"
Big sigh of relief!!!! So I give him the gist of what directions are. His response? "Oh."
"Daddy?" This time I stop loading again, to look at him and be ready for his next question so I don't get shocked or surprised.
"Yes, buddy?"
""Daddy, um, what's this battlemech called?" And he describes it....