The One Where Paprika Tells it Like it Is

Paprika Spice. I know, it sounds like an alias, right? It is. When she was about three she was sitting with her primary class at church during sharing time, where all the children sit for a short lesson and singing time. She observed rather loudly to her teacher, “Sister Coles, those are really big fake fingernails you have.” It is hard to know how to respond to that. “Um, thank you?” But Paprika persisted: “My mom says she can’t wear those. She says when she has big fake fingernails, she can’t wipe very good.”

At that point in the exchange, Paprika’s mother, who happened to be in the back of the room, corrected. “TYPE. I said I can’t TYPE very good.”

My son Ethan used to really tell it to you straight when he was that age. One night I took him with me to the grocery store and we saw a very obese woman driving around on one of those Little Rascal motorized carts. Ethan approached her for a closer look and said in his piercing and precocious two-year-old voice, “Mom, pretty soon you’re going to be so big you are going to have to ride on one of those.” Just so you can picture me in your mind’s eye, I was about seven months’ pregnant with Dillon, who weighed ten pounds at birth. I very quietly told him (perhaps while making little child abuse marks on his arm with my fingernails) that we don’t talk about people like that, and besides, I promise you that Mommy is not ever going to get so fat that she will have to ride around on a Little Rascal. To which he replied, “Yes you will, Mommy, just look at you!”

Maybe he was right. I am not planning to get that fat, but right about now I wouldn’t mind riding around on the cart for awhile. Maybe I just need to go take a nap.