Hip Mamma

If Only He Was A Leg Man…

originally published February 8, 2006

“Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own companions…”

Montaigne

When I saw the sheet to sign up for parent/ teacher conferences, I was very excited. I imagined all the wonderful things I would hear about my brilliant child. “He’s a genius, a genius I tell you! You have to get him into a special school, and fast! You shouldn’t be wasting a moment of this kind of potential!” I envisioned the teacher gushing on and on. Harvard here we come. Then I got an odd call. Could we please move the time so that the pre-school director could sit in on the meeting with us?

Hmmm. I guess she wants to tell us how brilliant he is, too. Good idea, leave no stone unturned. And so, hubby and I arranged our schedules so that we both could be there with the director and the pre-k teacher, our dear Ms. Rachel. The day arrived and Jeff and I filed into the office with Ms. Rachel and the assistant director. We looked at the work our student had been doing, the assessment methods the state uses, and heard that Justice is on track academically.

And then she got straight to the “potty talk” issue. He has been saying penis again. Gasp. He wants to build things with anatomically correct parts. Stunning. (Wait, she had totally skipped the genius stuff, I guess we’ll be coming back to that). AND, she reached down into her bag and pulled out two round, white coffee filters. Holding them up at chest level she broke the news. “He drew these in after school.” (Dramatic Pause).

“They’re boobs,” she informed us, reddening slightly. Jeff leaned over to inspect the white spheres more closely. “What are those, liver spots?” he inquired, pointing to some small, round creatures to the right of a nipple.

“No, they’re freckles,” I corrected. The symmetry was amazing, and the overall form, well, Matisse himself would have been proud. I looked up and caught the teacher’s eyes. Maybe we weren’t taking this as seriously as they expected us to. I hypothesized that it could be this lackadaisical attitude that landed us here in the first place. Sigh.

“They aren’t just boobies,” she told us. “He said they are the fake boobies that mommy wears to work everyday.”

“WHAT!? I don’t wear fake boobies!” I protested. Again, probably not the point. I don’t think Ms. Rachel understood how difficult it was for me to take the conversation seriously when she was still holding the two white coffee filters poignantly over her own chest.

And Jeff had still not stopped staring at the things. They aren’t real! Jeez, men and boobs. Obviously, Justin gets it from his father, “It’s not my fault!” I wanted to sob. I had a flashback to the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin when they are called into the office to discuss their son’s troubles at school and immediately start blaming the other parent, “You let them watch too much TV!” “You babied him all the time!” “You smoked pot in college!”

Suddenly I began to get paranoid: had I created a pervert? Would he be sitting in my basement in 30 years stroking his rifle and leafing through T&A magazine? But wait, I read the research. It’s okay for a child to see his opposite-sex parent nude until four or five years of age, and then it’s okay to see them in underwear. And seeing the same-sex parent nude actually builds self-esteem and healthy body image. Is this how Giorgione’s pre-k teacher reacted when he scribbled the beginnings of his “Sleeping Venus?” What if we had a Cézanne hanging in our house and Justice was just trying to imitate it? (We don’t). After all, the female form has inspired artists for centuries. It is, perhaps, the most popular subject in the history of art. This is obviously an evolutionary pull; it cannot be helped. It’s not my fault!!

More likely than any artistic tendencies I believe that Justice’s affinity for breasts probably began as a neonate. When he first suckled at those life-giving orbs, filled up his tummy and said, “Ahhh, now that’s the good stuff.” My breasts sustained him for the first months of his life, giving him food, comfort and warmth. It was a tough time when he hit 18 months and I decided to wean him, lest I have to live as an all-day pacifier for eternity.

He gave up the physical attachment to them fairly easily, but the fondness remains. My low-cut shirts are his favorites, pronouncing me “beautiful” in them as a haze comes over his little blue eyes. He is known to still reach up and give the old girls a “honk” from time to time, and in moments of stress he still tries to sneak a hand down the front of my shirt and cop a feel.

I’ve never really thought too much of these “oddities” because I understand his relationship with, and attachment to, my bosom. But as we sit, filters still teetering (hee hee) above Ms. Rachel’s waist, I realize that Justice and I are probably the only ones who understand this relationship.

We concede that we will speak to him and explain that those kinds of art projects should be saved for home. They remind us that they don’t view this as a behavior problem, but we should be aware that next year in public school it might be seen as just that. Sigh again.

I still haven’t decided if I’m going to send him to public school or hide him under a rock. We may have to head for Europe where his boob lust won’t be squelched. But I guess the best I can hope for is that we can turn him on to legs before kindergarten hits, or at the very least, convince him to switch to asses.

Elizabeth Deroshia beavislsbuffett@yahoo.com

Elizabeth Deroshia

beavislsbuffett@yahoo.com