Samuel and I were in the carpool line the other day and he asked me “What part of your face would you change if you could change any part of your face?”  I thought about it and finally said “My teeth…”.

I was going to say that I would make them straighter and whiter, but I paused first to show him my teeth.  He looked at me and said “WHOA!  Yeah, they’re HUGE!!!”.

Thanks, kid.  Now you’re going to give me a complex.

So next I asked him what he would change about himself.  My heart fell a notch when he said without hesitation, “My ears!”  I started scrambling through my repertoire of self-image speeches, trying to decide how best to approach this new twist in my little boy’s life.  I thought about how I have always feared he would grow to hate his ears and how sad I was to see that piece of his innocence stripped away.  I toyed with different ways to approach the topic, then finally, tentatively, asked “What would you change about them?”

His answer was “I would paint them blue”.

Blue?  Really?

When I followed up with “Why in the world would you paint your ears blue???” he said “Because I’ve always wanted blue ears.”

He clearly takes the “If you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em!” approach to life.  I, on the other hand, will be practicing smiling with my mouth closed!