From the Mouths of Babes

Yesterday I had one of those moments at the playground.

A chatty little munchkin plopped himself next to me as I sat watching my boys play in the sandbox.

He told me he was four.

And then he said, apropos of nothing, "I know a rhyme!"

What followed was a true Hallmark moment: an impossibly adorable impromptu rhyme slam between the two of us.

He did cat and bat. I did shoe and blue.

Ladida ladida. Aren't little kids just sooooooo creative and delightful, I thought dreamily.

Until it was his turn. And he came up with "digger" and, well, a word that rhymes with it starting with n.

I froze. Literally. About a million things went through my head at once. Was it my place to tell him that that wasn't a nice word? Should I tell his mother? Or was his mother was the one who taught him that word? You know, when you're sitting at home teaching your four-year-old words that rhyme with digger?

In the end, I just decided to believe that it was an unfortunate accident, and that he could have just as easily said "wigger" or "zigger." Because nobody actually sends their four-year-old out into the world anymore thinking it's ok to use that word in public, right??

Right??