It's one of the joys of parenthood that we seem to lose most of our capacity to feel embarrassed by ourselves just at the stage when our children feel embarrassment most acutely. I've started doing many of the things that my mum used to do that I found cringingly uncool. Like complaining. I'm not talking about general moaning, but proper 'I feel a letter coming on' complaining about bad service and that sort of thing. And then there's the dancing. I consider myself quite a nifty mover. On Wednesday mornings you'll find me in the front row at dance class, giving it my all, with jazz hands. But in my own kitchen, for some reason I'll start channelling my own inner middle-aged woman. There is lots of ill-advised frugging and boogying. The kids either ignore me or physically restrain me, lest I injure myself.
The Boy is gradually bowing to peer pressure and has started to find various body parts (mostly female) utterly unmentionable. But it's not his natural mindset. He asked me the other day over breakfast whether my boobs every got in the way. Reasonable question.
Last week he fell and hurt his shoulder and I had to take him to the hospital for x-rays. We were sitting in the x-ray room, waiting for the radiographer. It was a huge room, full of massive equipment and banks of buttons and switches. As we waited, he looked around the room. 'Mum, what are those?' he asked. There, hanging on the wall, was a row of black rubber plates, shaped like, well, underpants. They ranged in size from teen-tiny (newborn size, the sign said), to alarmingly huge (for large adults, apparently). I read the sign about this display: Gonad Shields.
Of all the exciting, unusual things in the room, this is the one my son homes in on. And I wasn't sure where to start my explanation. I'm pretty sure that, having just turned nine, he knows the basics of reproduction, but not the mechanics. So I started at the beginning: 'Do you know what your balls are for?'
I'm very glad the radiographer didn't walk into the room at that point. Now that would have been embarrassing.
