PhotoShoot Easter 2008

Alison and I spent part of this morning at the Hoosiers for Hillary campaign office. They’re just moving in, and Ali got her very own office where she watched movies while I happily did a tiny bit of grunt work for the campaign in anticipation of our May Primary Election.

On the way home, I almost wrecked the car after Alison started chattering away about her friend Madison. There may have been other near misses along the route, but this one even I noticed. Now I don’t have a thing against Madison. She’s just a little girl but she’s exposed to a whole lot more of life than Alison is and I don’t quite know how to deal with it. Whenever I get a troubling question from Alison, Madison is always at the root of it. “When are my things right here, you know my boobies, going to get big, Momma? Madison has big ones but I don't. I don’t want to wear that dress Momma; it makes me look fat and I don’t want to be fat. Madison says sometimes I look fat.”

Note to Amer: you may want to have some smelling salts on hand before you finish this.

Note to you nonBunconians: Amy gets angry at me when I give Alison the true facts of life and lives in fear of the day when Alison asks me how babies come to be. Poor Jenna will be in college when she finds out that Mom and Dad are Santa AND the Easter Bunny, that babies aren’t delivered via stork and that her mother may have one day by accident have actually had S.E.X.

The conversation as close to verbatim as I can muster:

“Momma, do you think I might get pregnant soon? " she asked. This is where I almost drove off the road. She continued, barely breathing.

"Madison says you never know when a girl might get pregnant. She could be 16 or 18 or 11 and bam! She’s pregnant. You just never know. So I’m going to be very careful when I go outside because you just never know when a baby might get inside there and you’ll have to have it right there in the middle of the street. And you know, Momma, new little babies get confused. They think the first person they see is their momma, so if I’m out there right in the middle of the street with lots of people around and my baby gets out and is all confused and sees someone else, she’ll think that person is her momma instead of me. And what if she sees a dog or cat or a tree and thinks that’s her momma? Momma, how does that baby get in there, anyway?”

I gulped and thought of Amy and her famous “Look a deer!” line when Alison was detailing for Jenna how babies actually emerge. The distraction helped then, but Alison is used to getting the facts.

“Honey, I thought you were going to wait to have a baby until after you went to college and got married,” I say, praying for help.

“Well yeah, that IS my plan but Madison says it could happen any TIME. You just never know when it’s gonna happen. It makes my stomach have a nervous breakdown just thinking about it.”

“Is your stomach afraid to have a baby in there?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s all nervous and scared. Momma, do you think I could have a snack when we get home?”

“Sure, honey. What kind of a snack do you want? We have ice cream and Gushers and bubble gum and Laffy Taffy….”

Thank God for a full freezer and cookie jar. So far, she hasn’t gotten back to the question. And yes I delivered on the snacks.

Amer, you can stop sweating… for now. You may also want to put a contract out on that Madison...

Happy Easter everyone!