I made the mistake of opening my son’s backpack yesterday. Besides the various papers, art pieces, old packages of graham crackers, and permission slips I never signed, I found 2 soft-covered books. One of them had a foreign, sticky substance on the back cover that I assumed was food.

Turns out I was wrong. I found out what it was through the following, utterly confusing, conversation:

Me: G, you ruined this book. There’s some gross food all over the back of it!

G (without looking up or batting an eye): Oh, that’s not food. It’s pee.

Let me interject here that this said book had been in his backpack for over a week. I guess covered in pee.

Me: WHAT?!

G: I said (now speaking VERY slowly, like I am stupid or someone who has a hearing deficiency) that…it…is…pee.

Me: WHAT?!

G (now shouting): PEE!!!!!!! I said PEE!!!!!!!!

I am now silent for a moment. All the various circumstances where a book could get PEED ON for God’s sake go through my head. And let me tell you, I didn’t come up with many. Until it occurred to me—I know. He took it into the bathroom!

Me: Why on earth would you take your book into the bathroom with you? That’s disgusting. Don’t do that.

G: I didn’t take it into the bathroom.

A minute goes by while I wait for him to give me more information. No more information comes out of his mouth.

Me: Well, then how did you get pee on it?

G: I didn’t get pee on it.

Me: Who did?

G: We were at the playground during Reading Buddies* and we were UNDER Charlemagne (clearly not the child’s real name who did this. I did not want to embarrass the poor child and put his real name) and he had an accident.

Me: ?

G is now looking at my blankly like he cannot believe we are having this mundane conversation as to why his book has pee all over it.

Me: Under him? Were you all making a pyramid?

G: What’s a pyramid?

And that’s how this conversation continued. To this day, I don’t know how G’s “Froggy Goes to Camp” book got peed upon. And I doubt I ever will. My big question now is—what do I do with the damn book?!

*For those of you wondering what “Reading Buddies” is, it is a charming program where the preschoolers are paired with a 2^nd grader and the 2^nd grader reads to his/her preschool buddy, usually on Tuesday afternoons. Where the brave  2^nd grader hopes to not get peed upon…

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Weekly Thought. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.