“Hey Mom” he say’s to me. I look up from my phone and tilt my head to look at my boy. Kosmo is 7 years old, built like a bulldog and wearing a necklace he made himself with beads or pasta or something. I smile. Covered in freckles and still unsure of his talking voice, he gets shy….even with me when it comes to talking.
” What’s up Bud” I say… even tho I don’t like the sound of it. I started calling his brother “bud” when he was born, but now I call them both bud. It has become a tick, I can’t stop! I say it every few minutes around my children. “hey bud, love ya bud, no bud, eww bud.” Its worse than potty.
I am 40 years old and I’m still saying potty. I never said potty a day in my life before I had kids, I didn’t even imitate Arnold Shwarzenegger saying PARTY, when that was a thing. The sound of it embarrassed me. Now I’m all “You need to go Potty Bud?…Bud go potty” all day long.
I had a plan to call bathroom stuff “Business” Go do your business…it sounds so dignified and productive. Somehow I let go of that vision in a moms group at a playground one day, as I inhabited someone else’s life completely. That person had a diaper bag full of binkies and wipies for her little bud.
Kosmo starts talking as I’m fantasizing about changing our family vocabulary. “Mom do you want to know what the Best Christmas Hotdog is? ” The way he words it. What a gift. I’m almost crying from the laughter in my heart, “Of Course!” I mean OF COURSE…not only that, I want to go up to everyone I know and every person I could possibly meet and ask them that same question. In fact….stop right there, I don’t even want to know the answer cause there is no way it’s as good as the question.
“Sure Bud” I say, ” What is the best Christmas Hotdog”
I am sure you are on the edge of your seat. Really animated with live pantomime action. He explains ” Well it’s like a regular hot dog, but its curved on the end, you know…like a candy cane. But its a hot dog and the grill marks are the stripes”
Holy crap, we are gonna be rich! I reserve christmashotdog.com before he is done talking. I’m excited, He’s excited! and then he says “And it could be mint flavored” …..annnndddd we come to a screeching halt. He looks up in the air and scrunches his face as if imagining the taste of mint hot dogs, then he shrugs his shoulders and plods off down the hallway.
That was it. Just a weird little wonderful moment. Sure I wonder where this thought came from, given it’s February and he had chicken for dinner.
I have drawn the conclusion that if the “Best Christmas Hot Dog” was made of lamb, and then served with royal mint jelly….It really wouldn’t be so bad. It would sort of make Kosmo’s curved mint hot dog dreams come true in a non revolting way. Already came up with a logo actually. I’m not sure if this company is the future for my family, and I’m not sure if Kosmo will be President or CFO. But I will tell you this, he will have a big office someday and I as his mother, will be able to use the executive potty whenever I want.
