while I was away

To add a little levity to my blog, and since I can't post this on my family blog:

On a drive today, my husband started filling me in on all the hangovers (okay, maybe just two) he had while I was away visiting in Utah. We had this conversation somewhat unaware of how much our son, sitting in the back seat, actually comprehends. (We're very open with him about alcohol. He insists that it is just for grown-ups and he can't drink until he's 21, but won't even start then because he thinks beer's gross! We intend to get that statement in an audio recording, and play it back to him when he's 15 and comes home smashed after a party about which he swore "the parents are home" and "there won't be any drinking." Anyway, that's not the point of this post.)

When my husband described a particularly bad hangover he got after keeping up with a 230-pound friend with shot after shot of Zambuca, he used the phrase "hugging the toilet."

Our son suddenly burst into the conversation with "You were hugging the toilet!?!?" and began laughing uproariously. We all had a good laugh and had to explain in what way, exactly, his dad could hug a toilet.

And since I'm talking about alcohol (when will I shut up about that?) and my son...

Whenever we visit family, I have worried that our son, in his innocence, will blurt out something about Mom and Dad drinking alcohol. You know, something like "Dad likes beer, but Mom likes wine," which he has said at our house; or "That's the kind of beer my dad likes," which is how Zarathustra's daughter revealed his drinking habits to his sister-in-law. So far, he's been tactfully silent on the matter around my family. This New Year's Eve he came close to revealing my secrets when I offered to pour him some Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider (Non-Alcoholic), out of what appeared to him to be a wine bottle. "Is it alcohol?" he asked. Luckily, no one but me was around to hear him, so I didn't have to get red in the face and possibly bumble my way through an explanation as to why the preschool-age son of an apostate was thinking about alcohol. A high-school-age boy, even a Mormon one, will joke around about beer, but a preschooler? Something must be wrong with his parents.