Rob Williams - Orangejack

"Why do girls go around in bikinis?" [the eight-year old son] groused. "Of all the dumb things to wear."

This struck me as funny, which provoked him still further.

"It's just like underwear," he said. "They wouldn't go walking down the street in their underthings, would they? So why go around in bikinis?"

"Girls wear bikinis because boys like them," I said.

He stopped short and stared at me, incredulous.

"Not boys your age," I went on. "Teenagers, and grown up men. They think women look pretty in bikinis--but that doesn't mean they think women should wear them in public."

He was still staring at me, utterly flabbergasted. Finally he found his tongue: "It disturbs me," he said formally, "that you are telling me that one day I will think girls look pretty in bikinis. That disturbs me. I know what I think, and I don't think that."

By this point I was laughing out loud. He was so serious, and so affronted.

...then their ten-year-old sister, from her vantage point of greater age and wisdom, enlightened them: "It has to do with hormones. You know, the hormones that are going to make your armpits get hairy."

My middle child stared at her blankly for a moment, groping for a withering riposte--but his face fell with defeat.