"Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees..."

Osmia ribifloris (on a barberry flower)

Borrowed from Wikipedia

(USDA Photo by Jack Dykinga)

Yesterday evening, I was giving my son, En-Uk, his regular English lesson, which he loves ... to interrupt:

"And so," I explained, "at the end of a question comes a --"

"Daddy," he interrupted, "do you have any sisters?"

"No," I said, "just brothers."

"Your mother didn't want any sisters?" he asked.

"Daughters," I corrected.

"Your mother didn't want any daughters?"

"Oh," I replied, "she wanted some."

"Your father wouldn't let her?"

"He wasn't against daughters," I explained, "but they couldn't choose whether to have boys or girls."

"But mama chose," he objected.

"No," I said, "mama didn't choose, and neither did I."

I nearly added that we couldn't have chosen, but that's not quite correct anymore and would have required a rather technical explanation beyond En-Uk's comprehension, for at 6 years, what can he know about the facts of life?

Accepting that the specific choice was out of people's hands, En-Uk remarked, "Then, you'd have to do it fourteen nights to get a daughter."

"Huh? Fourteen nights?" I wondered. Then a bigger thought hit. "Wait a minute, En-Uk. Do what for fourteen nights?"

"Do it."

"Do what?"

"It."

"En-Uk, what is this 'it' that one has to do?"

En-Uk looked at me as if I were most appallingly ignorant and then, in a tone for explaining the most obvious, natural fact in all creation, said, "You'd have to pray for fourteen nights."

"Oh," I said, smiling. "Right."

And there I had been thinking that he didn't know the facts of life...