...And Keep Your Hands To Yourself

I’m just going to come right out and say it.

What is up with little boys and their winkies? 

No.  Seriously.  My son’s obsession with boogies and picking his nose has waned and his new obsession has proven infinitely more entertaining to him and, though I didn’t think it was possible, even more embarrassing to me.  A couple of weeks ago while I was on the phone with my sister I heard him say, “Oh, it fits!”  That’s never a good thing to hear when your back is turned, as moms know all too well that “it” could be a number of things fitting into a number of orifices: bean in the nose, pencil in the ear, or anything from the floor in the mouth.  I looked over from where I stood in the kitchen. (Why do these things always happen when I’m on the phone?)  My son had pulled down his underwear and his pull-up and all I could see was his naked lower half.  He stood with his butt cheeks clenched as he pushed out his pelvis, all the while trying to slide a small play-dough tube over his, well, you know.  “No don’t put that on your winky!” I screamed in a panic.  My mind flashed forward to trying to explain this to an ER doctor:  “I’m sorry but we need one who specializes in winky tube removals.”  I said to my sister, “I gotta go,” to which she replied over her uproarious laughter, “Yeah, they never grow out of that by the way.”

I can’t help but think that this is all my fault.  Up until we started potty training he hadn’t paid much attention to the thing.  We’d strip him down before a bath and let him run around naked, thinking it was a healthy expression of his natural state of being. In fact, it took him a while to actually run naked.  For the longest time he walked bow legged throughout the house, knowing something was down there but not fully understanding the what or the why of it.  That was a hilarious, innocent time in his and my life.  But as we all know, a boy can’t stay in diapers forever and it was unavoidably time to go tinkle in the big boy potty.  It seemed like all it took was for the underwear to come off and a downward glance and poof, the world made sense.  When he was in diapers he only reached down to touch it occasionally as we changed or bathed him.  He had no idea what it was actually capable of doing.  Then all of a sudden he was being told to pay attention to it, nay, to focus intently on it and, oh boy, point it at something.  It was like he discovered a new playground at the end of our street.  Now the boy is constantly touching it, pulling it, opening his shorts to look at it, even bragging about it, “Look at my big winky mama!”  (He doesn’t suffer from any confidence issues, to be sure.)  I’d like to share in his enthusiasm over his newfound thingy, but because I don’t have one myself, I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.  I pretty much feel about those things the way I do about the telephone poles in my backyard; I understand their purpose and I would like for them to work properly, but I don’t want to stand around and look at them all day. “Yes, baby, you tinkle out of there,” is all I can say in response to him, and then offer a distraction, “Look!  A bird!”  

Please God, let’s go back to the nose picking phase.  I’ll take big boogies over this any day. 

Are all boys like this?  (Yes.)

Downtown at the City Garden as I was changing my son out of his swim shorts into some dry pants in front of God and the AT&T building, he looked down and said in a loud voice, “Hey, where’s my winky?”  I said, “Shhh!” which we all know works great when I’m trying to get him to be quiet.  He said it louder and with more punctuation.  “WHERE’S.  MY.  WINKY.  MAMA?”  I tried to explain to him quietly that it was just cold but he wasn’t buying it.  “But it’s hot mama.”  I couldn’t disagree.  Come on guys.  I didn’t sign up for this.  I’d like to have a “pass” option and field all of these types of questions to my husband.  Although, I wonder how mature that conversation would be since the man tells my son to “shake the dew off the lily” after each tinkle.  When the hubby is not around it’s totally up to me to explain these manly things.  Grasping at straws, since “it’s cold” wasn’t an acceptable answer, I followed up with, “It’s like a turtle.  It will come out again when it feels safe.”  Thank God that he quickly forgot about that analogy because I don’t want him calling the thing a turtle.  Winky is bad enough.  Turtle will for sure get him beat up in high school.

You guys, I have never in my life talked about winkies this much.  I'm going a little nuts.  (Pardon the expression.)  I’m so sick of them.  I wish I could go back in time and tell the misogynist Sigmund Freud that, uh, yeah right.  There are people who suffer from “you know what” envy and guess what?  Those people ain’t women. 

Or as Elaine from Seinfeld put it, "I don't know how you guys walk around with those things."

This may seem like inappropriate talk or taboo subject matter to you but it’s my life.  God help me if I have more boys.  Please don’t stop reading my blog.  I promise to not write about winkies ever again.  I don’t mean to offend your delicate boundaries or your moral sensibilities, I just need to talk to someone about this.  We never, ever, talked about our private parts growing up.  Remember, my mother’s disapproval of all anatomically correct language forced me to come up with substitutes like “cookie” and “winky” in the first place.  The woman called everything, front and back, a “bottom.”  I never understood what, or where, she was talking about.  This is why she nearly had a heart attack when we were at an all-you-can-eat-pizza buffet and I gave my son a small ice cream cone for dessert and he said, “Grandma, my winky looks like an ice cream cone!”  Heck, she’d have a heart attack if she read this.

I don’t want to shut down my son because I’m overly sensitive about stuff down there, but how do I get him to stop already?  Once again I’m forced to walk a fine line of discipline.  Encourage a healthy appreciation for Mr. Johnson but not a clingy, stalker like obsession with it.  Make sure he knows that it’s okay to talk about it but let’s be careful to pick our time and place.  (Like, a blog that all of your friends from church can read, perhaps?)  I think I’ll have to be as delicate as I can with this one.  No overreacting but no giggling either, which will be and has been difficult for me.  Every time I tell him to “keep your hands to yourself” I cringe…and then smile.  And I have a sneaky suspicion that while you might not admit it, you've probably done the same thing.