Daddy, am I going to die?

"Daddy, am I going to die?" Ryley asked while driving home from school yesterday.

I had done my research,  I had long known that I would someday be answering that question.  Fortunatly for me, there is a ton of information on the subject.  Here in an article on babycenter.com they say, "No matter how many times you explain it, preschoolers can't really understand what causes death, and they may think of it as something that's temporary and reversible."  Parents advisor David Fassler, MD says, Telling him that "Grandma went to sleep" or "We lost Grandma" will only backfire. "You might confuse your child or even make him afraid to go to sleep at night."   WebMD.com says, "Experts advise parents to be honest and concrete in discussions about death. Avoid euphemisms. Adults use euphemisms to avoid uncomfortable subjects, but children, who think literally throughout a great deal of childhood, may not pick up on these cues."  Then again, WebMD also says that that ingrown hair on my neck is probably cancer, so take that for what its worth.

I had my answer planned out.  "All of our bodies will someday stop working.  That is why we are safe and wear our seat belts and eat healthy food, and we don't do dangerous things.  That way our bodies will last a very long time and you won't have to worry about it until you get to be really really old."  Yeah, I know, 'Father of the Year'.

Unbeknownst to me, while I had planned on answering the question, I hadn't planned on answering it in my truck doing 70mph down I-90 on August 4th, 2014 at 4:47pm. Prepare as you must, questions like that will undoubtedly take you by surprise.   What I answered wasn't exactly the same thing as what I had prepared.

"Uhhhhhh......Yes, you are".  

WTF?  Am I retarded or something?  I did a better job asking Stephanie Berger out my freshman year of High School.  And she turned me down! Surely an answer like that can only lead to a barrage of other uncomfortable questions that I will equally fail at answering.  I've just officially screwed up my kid.  Might as well just take him straight to Hot Topic and buy him some black nail polish, a Marilyn Mason t-shirt, and change his name to "Dred".

We all knew I would do it sooner or later.  I guess its time to start focusing on the twins.  Live and learn.

I waited for his response, "Yeah, some day I'm going to close my eyes and I will never see anything ever again.  And you know what?  I'm SO excited to go to Outer Banks!"

Wait... there's no way that WebMD was actually right about something, is there?  He actually got it?  Honest, to the point, in a means that he can understand.  No fluff, no happy thoughts, no side stepping the subject.  He got it just fine on his own and it made sense to him in a way that he could understand it.  

Maybe I've got this parenting thing down after all.  No Scream-O music for this household.  "Daddy, where do babies come from?"..... bring it on!