Put It In Your Pocket

This past week I had the honor of babysitting a few of my favorite kids. (Oh, hey, there’s a sentence I thought I’d never be saying in my 20s.)

Anyway, we were knee-deep in Gogurts and a heated game of Tiddlywinks when the eight-year-old began quizzing me on my own relationship. “You have a boyfriend, right?” she asked me. I answered her and that’s when the interrogation began. Within minutes, she was barking out hard-hitting questions like “What color hair does he have?” “Do you like him?” and “Does he have a mom?” Obviously, it was exhausting.

I continued to answer and keep my cool until—thankfully—her little brother interrupted to let us know that he, too, had a boyfriend...who was his cousin. Nothing like a little joke about incest to lighten the mood.

Just when I thought the cross-examination was over, she really brought the heat. “Will you marry him?” she asked, with berry yogurt smeared on her chin. I hesitated. “Sure. Someday,” I replied.

“The ring’ll be in his pocket, you know,” she said and then jetted off to the den with her purple cupcake purse in tow.

And there I was, abandoned in the kitchen with a bunch of Gogurt wrappers and the inability to shake off the urge to immediately check my boyfriends pockets for some bling. Forget it. I thought. The only thing I’ll find in there will probably be a few quarters and a receipt to the ice cream we bought a few days ago. But I’m okay with that. That ice cream was pretty great.