Mommy, I snipped my nuts...

This admission ranks right up there with things you never want to hear coming from the mouth of your four-year old son. Heck, you wouldn't want to hear it coming from the mouth of anyone, never mind the age. Ah, one of the many joys of raising sons when you really have no idea what you're doing. Last year, after suffering through months of a particularly dismal winter (and a husband who continually turns down the heat because he's cheap AND his people are used to running around in kilts so my guess is that they're of hardier stock), I decided to buy the kids warmer PJs. You know the ones: they're fuzzy, they're cozy, they've got feet. The ones you wish came in your size. The ones where you don't want to be messing with a classic combo of zipper and private parts.

This particular night in question, my husband was away on a business trip. Goes without saying that the first thing I did was crank up the heat. Being that I was heavily pregnant, within minutes the soaring heat threw me into a lather. But I soldiered on, because I wanted the house to be warm enough for the kids. I was bathing my daughter, intermittently laying against the cold tile on the bathroom floor in an attempt to regulate my body temperature, while my four-year son sat in the living room watching Treehouse. (You know the station...the one that makes parents want to saw on their wrists with a butter knife but we don't turn it off for fear of being physically assaulted by a toddler. I pick my battles).

Things were ticking along smoothly until I heard an earth-shattering shriek from the living room...the type that makes the hairs in your unshaven pits stand on end. I quickly wrapped Isla in a towel and went racing (waddling really, like only a heavily pregnant woman can do) from the bathroom, and rounded the corner just as my son screamed out, "Oooooooooooweeeeeeeeee, Mommy! Hurry! I snipped my nuts." As I met him in the hallway, I dropped to my knees. The sight of him clutching his tackle amidst the wreckage of a long-zipper had me praying to Baby Jesus and all things holy. I had to focus, friends...I had to pull myself together quickly. All I could picture was that scene from There's Something About Mary and I tell you, I was already mentally preparing for the 911 call because I'm not good with these sorts of things. Truth be told, until that point, I'd never really stopped to consider, "Hey, would I be good in a situation where my child has erroneously clamped his genitals in a 2-foot zipper?" But now I can answer that question for certain. No. I would not consider this to be an area of strength.
Mercifully, by the time I got in there to survey the damage, I could see that he had already dislodged "his nuts". I was crying. Tears of relief were streaming down my face...albeit heavily laced with tears of laughter, which I desperately tried to hide from him. Snipped my nuts? Where does he get this from?

Of course I had to ask him, mostly because I was downright curious:

Me: How on earth did you manage to snip your nuts?
Jack: I was hot and my nuts needed some air so I pulled the zipper down and it snipped my nuts.

I was without words. How to kindly tell a 4-year old that an alternate method of obtaining fresh air would be to step outside? Needless to say, I turned down the heat. Let’s just say that now when the footed PJs get pulled out, there's a rule that we always throw gitch on first. Precautions, people. Crap like that should be in bold font as a warning on the footed-PJ label. In my opinion, that information would be much more useful than how to wash it. (Like really, all kids clothing is going in one cycle anyway, regardless of colour and fabric, no matter what the label recommends...that's just how this Mama rolls. I'll suck up the odd casualty.)
As luck would have it, around the same time of the snipping-of-the-nuts incident, I had to have a discussion with Jack about scratching his nuts. He was doing it a lot. My final attempt at seeing progress in this area went something like this:

Me: Jack, you really need to stop playing with your nuts.
Jack: Daddy does.
Me: You are correct. Daddy does. But you shouldn't do it around other people.
Jack: Just read the book, OK Mommy? (We were engrossed in Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney.)
Me: OK, I'll keep reading but you have to promise you'll quit scratching your nuts.
Jack: What if my nuts are itchy?
Me: Then scratch. Just not around other people. It's gross.

Mother-of-the-Year speech over, I continued to read Guess How Much I Love You. That is, until we got to the page in the book where the cute-as-a-button Little Nutbrown Hare is rubbing his eyes, getting sleepy, staring up into the great big sky...it’s my favourite part of the story.  For copyright reasons I can’t show you an image of the actual book, but here’s my best crack at replicating the photos.

I'm about to turn the page when the following flies out of his mouth:

Jack: Hey, look! Little Nutbrown Hare is scratching his nuts.
Me: What are you talking about?
Jack: He's rubbing his eyes, then he's scratching his nuts. See? His paws are down there and he's scratching. Look, he's smiling.

By this point, Jack was laughing hysterically and I all but released urine in an attempt not to laugh; I wanted my message about not scratching nuts to be serious. But that lasted all of...oh...let's go with 2 seconds, before I collapsed in a helpless heap of body-shaking laughter. Seriously though, is something the matter with his brain? When I finally pulled myself together long enough to speak, I conceded:

Me: You're right, Jack. It looks like he may be having a scratch. For the record though, I don't think he is...I think he's just resting his paws down there. But what great imagination! Wow! Well done. Just remember, if he is in fact scratching his nuts, it's OK because he's in the woods and no one's around.
Jack: So I can scratch my nuts in the woods?
Me: Be my guest.
Jack: What does that mean?
Me: Go for it. In the woods.
Jack: Thanks, Mommy.
Me: You're welcome, my little nut-scratcher.