Old Soul

Once when my elder son was about 5 years old or so, we were watching one of those shows on Discover about freaky medical condition people. One of the subjects was a young girl with a facial deformity caused by overgrowth of blood vessels, so she had kind of a purple lumpy misshapen face. When my son first saw her he burst out laughing, which absolutely mortified me until I realized it was maybe not a bad reaction, just that he didn't know yet about not laughing at deformities and differences. So I gave him the talk about how she was just like us inside, but the way she looked caused people in her village to laugh at her and call her monster, and it's just the way she's made and blah, blah, sensitivity, compassion. He got it, you could tell, and felt kind of bad that he had inadvertently mocked. He's always been one to really love the deep adult conversation and was positively jazzed about the seriousness of the event. And also, he's one of those kids who has never really been young--he's all deep and shit.

That being said, the next freaky condition on the show was a man with werewolfism. You know, the guy has hair all over, like to the point that he has to brush his shoulders and condition his face. I saw my son watching this very intently, wheels turning, gears grinding. He turned to me and said with the degree of sincerity that can only be achieved by the truly innocent, "Mom, that man is really good at growing hair, and I bet he's very warm!" 

That was one of many moments I've had as a mom where you are pulled so hard in two strangely non-opposing but wildly different emotional directions that your brain could actually liquefy. On the one hand, that was fucking hilarious and I really had to stifle because it's tough not to laugh at how hard he worked to come up with a compliment for the fantastically hairy werewolf man. On the other hand, how sweet is that little boy? And how proud am I that he not only listened to a concept that is central to my being, but totally applied it, and hilariously at that?

One of my favorite moments of all time, for sure.