
(Warning: An injection of insulin will be required at the end of this post)
Go ahead and set the scene in the car. I have picked up The Kryptonite Kid and his sister from school and am driving to the older kids school to pick them up.
“Mom?” It is my 6 year old daughter, The Informant, who is speaking. “Do you want to know what He did?”
“Don’t. Don’t say it. I mean it,” said the Kryptonite Kid from the seat next to her.
Well, I’m intrigued now. But I down play it, knowing that is the best way to get information. I think I could teach classes in reverse psychology by now.
She takes a deep breath, so she can get the whole thing out in the rapid-fire, no-punctuation method that is best used for the selling out of compatriots, “At recess, Jack and his girlfriend, they went behind a tree and they kissed!” she announced gleefully.
The Kid jumps in “Mom, I just want you to know, that is totally true…And I did not want her to say it.”
I had heard about a girlfriend over the Christmas break. He was looking forward to getting back to school because he missed her.
“So what do you like about this girl?” I ask oh so casually.
“She’s just cute…all the time. Plus, she has this hat with a polar bear on it and sometimes she watches me play basketball.”
Well, ok then. It’s pretty hard to have better reasons than that when you’re 8. I didn’t quite know how to think about this at the time. It was completely unknown territory to me. The 2 older boys had never even come close to using the word “girlfriend” had never kissed anyone that I had heard of, and I’m pretty sure I’d hear about it. They’re terrible at keeping secrets.
The Kryptonite Kid? For the most part, he’s never even heard of a secret. Clear as glass, he is, and true to form, he gives me the rest of the story.
“You want to know the good part Mom?”
I don’t know? Do I?
“She didn’t scream.”
“Well, that is good,” I say. “They shouldn’t scream when you kiss them.”
I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be telling him not to kiss girls and stuff, but in all honesty, I’m too fascinated by all this to stop it before I get the whole story.
“But the bad part was we had to wait for like 10 or 15 whole minutes for a teacher not to be there.”
“Oh, uh, well, where did you kiss her?”
“On the cheek.”
This relieves me with it’s sheer innocence. I am powerless at times before this kid. He’s just that sweet. And then he rushes to reassure me some more, you know, just to be clear…
“But we didn’t have sex.”
At this point, I don’t wreck the car. I do mention that, hey, he doesn’t even know what sex is and that it isn’t a good idea to talk about things if you don’t know what they are. But I keep it all low key. There will be a quiet bedtime discussion about perhaps waiting to kiss any more girls…other than his Mom, along with a quiet prayer that we don’t hear from this girls parents or the Principal, and we’ll leave it at that.
But, WoW. He kissed a girl. And I have another small bullet of ammunition to put away for later use on the older boys when they get too cocky. I’ll be able to remind them that their little brother beat their time by a good 4 years or more.

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