In the Car: Pastafarians and Bacon.
I’m sure most everyone can agree that the most interesting conversations between parents and kids (since even if you don’t have kids, you were one once) happen in cars. There’s something about a confined space that seems to bring out the odd conversations.
The Oldest Kidlet’s school has a yearly Winter Program, where they kids since a bunch of non-religious Christmas songs. You know, the ones that mention Christmas, but not God. So a lot of songs about Santa or snow. This year, one of the songs his class is singing is “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” The former Jungle Cruise Skipper in me has issues with the song… but he’s having fun learning it.
One of the lines in the song is about hippos being vegetarians, so we were discussing what vegetarians eat, which led to me mentioning that my mom is pescetarian, a vegetarian who eats fish occasionally.
“That sounds silly. Almost like you’re saying Pastatarian.”
“I believe they go by pastafarian, but that’s supposed to sound silly.”
“What’s a pastafarian?”
“That’s a conversation for another day.”
“Oh. Where does bacon come from?”
“Pigs.”
A horrified gasp came from the back seat. “DID YOU SAY KIDS?”
“No! Pigs.” I oinked a few times for good measure.
“That’s a relief. For a second I thought you’d been feeding me people. And you wouldn’t do that.”
“Definitely wouldn’t.”
“Phew.”
And then we laughed all the way to his class, and he said that next time he’ll listen a little more closely. Be glad that I ignored more of my Jungle Cruise programming. Because what I wanted to say was, “Of course not. Everyone knows that kids are much too stringy for bacon.”
Which… wouldn’t have helped. But I knew you lot would appreciate it.
