What Kind of Body?

The scene: downstairs in my boys’ room. I am looking around everywhere for Bulls Eye, the stuffed horse, for my youngest. My 2 eldest sons are sort of play wrestling on one of the beds when, all of a sudden, my oldest sits up and says,”Mom, I just don’t know how I can ever impress Isabelle.” (Isabelle is the fifth-grade girl with whom every fifth-grade boy is in love right now.) I smothered a chuckle and said, “J, why do you need to impress Isabelle?” He replied, “Because, I’m a nobody.” I told him, while wondering where he had gotten this notion, that he wasn’t a nobody. He then demanded, “Well, what kind of body AM I?” I was still searching for an answer when his brother told him, “You’re a human body.” And then the brother rolled off the bed laughing.

Who knows where the conversation would have led had I not at that moment located Abu (the monkey from Aladdin) who the oldest was delighted to see since he had been missing for a few days.

It’s a given that I have no idea what he will say. What isn’t always known, I guess, is how surprised I’ll be by what he has to tell me.