Have I got a hole in my bum?

If you read last week’s post you will know that my son resurrected an old question about his eyes. The eye question used to be asked frequently when he was around 3 years old. After he resurrected it I started thinking about other questions he had asked frequently which I had forgotten* about (*blocked out) and I just knew I had to write about this one question, well actually there are three questions as there was three questions in one….

“Have I got a hole in my bum?” 

“Have you got a hole in your bum?”

“Has everyone got a hole in their bum?”

I am 40 years old and I’ve been through some interesting life experiences but never has anyone asked me if I had a hole in my bum. I’m not sure when you realize you have a hole in your bum. I’m not sure whether other children have asked a similar question. If you know of a child who has asked this question then please let me know. I know my daughter didn’t. I can’t recall any of my friends saying their child asked it. And it’s such a funny question that I am sure if a child had asked it someone would talk about it. If your child asked once you could kind of understand it, you know they might have an itch and realised oh my god there is a hole in my bum, what is that there for but my child asked over and over again. Infact he would bend over show me his hole in his bum and ask 

“Have I got a hole in my bum?”

Yes.

“Have you got a hole in your bum?”

Yes.

“Has everyone got a hole in their bum?”

Yes, it’s just like the holes in your nose or ears.

Except it isn’t like the holes in your nose and ears because you can’t see it. You can see your nostrils in the mirror, you can see everyone else’s nostrils when you look at them but you never see your bum hole and to be honest I’m not sure I want to see mine, or anyone else’s for that matter, but I guess in order to know it’s there it would be helpful to see it. And maybe that explains why he needed to know over and over again about it and he needed to know if everyone was the same as him. I guess we take it for granted that our children will know we are all the same. Now I know technically we aren’t all the same but all humans have a hole in their bum…well I think we do. We all have a brain – well most of us do. We all have ears and noses etc. So we take it for granted that our children can look at what they have and know that another human being has the same. Except you can’t look at your bum or anyone else’s so how do you know. I do draw the line at showing my son my bum hole or anyone else’s bum hole so I needed another strategy!!

And the only strategy I had left was to talk about it. I then spent a long time explaining about the hole in his bum, what it was for, what it does, what comes out of it….this wasn’t the first time I talked a load of crap!! I tried not to be too anal about it, and made it funny, so funny we laughed until our cheeks hurt, the cheeks on our face not our bum!!!! And eventually the hole in his bum question disappeared……..And all I can say for now is I am glad he is a boy and we don’t have to talk about any other holes he may have found on his body…..