Some days I wish I could step back in time by about 35 years…back to when I was only 7 or 8 and the world made perfect sense. Or, I assume the world made perfect sense. It seems to make perfect sense to my almost 8 year old son.
Just this morning Braden informed me that everyone in the world spoke English. I tried to disabuse him of this notion by explaining to him that people in, say, Italy or Chile (for example) have no real need to know the English language, any more than we in the midwest need to know how to speak Portuguese or Hungarian. He wasn’t buying it.
“Nope,” he said. “Everyone in the world speaks English because everyone in the world has to speak English.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“Well,” he said. “My name is Braden. The only way to say Braden is in English, so anyone who calls me by name speaks English.”
Okay, then.
But it doesn’t stop there. Last night Braden was on the floor of my living room, doing his very best to get his head near his rear end. He was flipping all over the place and doing a great imitation of a contortion artist, all to no avail. He simply couldn’t get his head to touch his rear end.
“Braden, what in the world are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m trying to see if I can lick my penis like Hershey does,” he responded.
“Braden! You’re a boy and Hershey’s a dog. You’re not supposed to be able to lick your penis,” I responded in complete disgust.
“Yeah…but Hershey can do it and I want to try!”
“Braden, that’s absolutely disgusting! Why would you want to do that? It’s gross! Even if you could do it, why would your want to?” I asked.
He thought on this for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders.
“I dunno. Hershey seems to like it.”
Oh boy…I’m just gonna say that I know quite a few people who will never be given the opportunity to meet my son! Yikes!
C.H. Armstrong Books 
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