My kid, she is thinking about boys. BOYS.
In the vain hope that maybe, just maybe she meant some girls in her class or the Five Guys chick who took our order or really, anyone except BOYS, I probed for more details.
Yeah, definitely boys.
I had to play it cool and not let on how much this was both cracking me up and freaking me out. "Well, are there any boys that you like?" She tried to shimmy out of it. "I like all boys." "Well, okay, but are there any that you LIKElike?" Again with the blushing. "Ummm... maybe."
For the next ten minutes we went through every. single. boy she knows and she declared him a Yes, a Maybe, or a No. Except for the ones that were halfway between a Yes and Maybe. And that one who was a quarter of a Yes and the rest of the way a Maybe. And the one at the very bottom of Maybe (poor kid).
The final tally: 5 definite Yes men. Of those, three are in her class, one lives next door, and the last one is -- sweetfancymoses -- an 8th grader on her bus.
Where did this come from, and how can I stuff it back in there??
That said, if I roll my Mom Eyes back far enough I can see my second-grade self, and she's got a giant crush on Billy R. The feeling was mutual; I remember the giddiness of talking to him on the phone after school, the lumpy chair I had to stand on to use the phone because I was too short to reach the top of the dresser where it sat. I remember all the girls giggling when he left flowers on my desk, scraggly pink ones he'd picked from some poor woman's garden on his way to school that morning.
It was innocent and sweet, much like our conversation tonight. So while part of me is decidedly not ready for all of this, a bigger part of me is thrilled that Miss O wanted to talk about it. With me. I can't tell you how lucky I feel, and how much I'd do to keep her talking about this stuff because one day she'll read this and use it against me. But trust me, it's a lot.
P.S. Want to know what pushed a boy from the Maybe to the Yes? "A good sense of humor. I don't want him to sit there all, you know... [crosses arms, frowns]. And also a good sense of food. Because I like food."