He knows not what he says

Ben and I lunched at IHOP today, and much hilarity ensued. When my Diet Coke and his ice water were delivered to the table, the boy said, "Let's have a drinking contest!" I demurred, given that (a) my glass was larger than his, so it wouldn't be a fair match-up, (b) I wanted to sip my beverage during my meal, (c) chugging 16 ounces of pop would surely lead to monstrous eructation, and (d) what the hell? This isn't college. (I confess we did compete later on, when his water glass and his milk glass were equally full and I wanted to motivate him to finish his milk. Worked like a charm. This kid likes to compete. He always wants to win the getting-dressed contest, which is not a fair fight because he doesn't wear a bra and never has to slow down to apply a pantyliner.)

Ben also prodded my funny bone in the relish with which he approached a link of breakfast sausage. "Yummm! Sausage is tasty!" He pleaded for more sausage, so we got a side order and he devoured those links, too. Then he came around to my side of the booth and stood beside me to share his sausage fantasies: "You know what I want? A giant sausage that lays on the floor [gesturing down the aisle to indicate, say, a three-foot-wide, twenty-foot-long pork sausage]. And everyone would eat it. No! I'll eat it all myself!"

I swear he's not learning this stuff from us, and has no clue why his desire for a "man-sized" cucumber or a "giant sausage" rouse such amusement among adults.

Oh! He was asking about my C-section before bed tonight. I explained the anesthetic set-up, and also disclosed that most babies aren't born via C-section. I swear he's a scientific genius—he instinctively grasped the process of childbirth and likened it to pooping, which pretty much entails the same physical mechanisms, no?