Saturday, January 03, 2009

The King and I

One of the funny things about being a Mama is that I'm a girl and strictly speaking I don't know what it's like to be a boy. Generally, things go just fine. But sometimes JT surprises me. The other day, he requested that I grab up the post-shower towel and dry him off. As he stood on the bath mat, dripping wet from the shower, I took up the towel (warmed from being left on the radiator) and began to dry him off.

"Hurry," he urged, "the King is getting cold."

"Well, King," I responded, "the Queen Mum is doing her best."

And then it became clear that the "King" in question wasn't the boy but his penis, whom he then requested that I refer to as "your majesty."

What? This boy has two mothers (me, the daily mama who lives with him and a second who plays parent every other weekend). He has no father and no brothers. He has a number of male influences in his life but, to my knowledge, none has explained to him that the penis is King.

And yet.

Biology is destiny it would seem.

2 comments:

  1. We can't defeat patriarchy until males figure out that their penises aren't kings - They're jesters. :) Hilarious story!

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  2. I suspect this has roots in 4th-grade boy-talk. You can't fight 4th-grade boy-talk.

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