Matthew Monday: Operations and Anatomy

Some conversations come out of nowhere and they usually lead to something interesting.  The mind of a five year old doesn’t work like ours.  Who knows what inspires them to ask what they ask?

I was eating lunch the other day at the kitchen table.  Matthew had eaten his lunch watching the TV watching one of his cartoons, Olivia I think.   Not sure why but he comes over and asked a series of questions.

“Did Nonna have an operation on her hip?” he asked.  Nonna is Italian for grandmother and how he refers to my mother.

“Yes, she had a hip replacement.”

“Did they have to put her to sleep?”

“Yes, she they had to make her sleep for it.”

“Did she have any other operations?”

“No, not really.”  Actually she had but nothing as major as a hip replacement and I didn’t want to get into it with him.

“Did Brandi have to get an operation on her stomach?”  Brandi was our previous dog who passed away a year and a half ago.  You can go through the Brandi tagged posts here.    

At first I wasn’t sure what he was referring to.  Brandi had internal cancer and they had to open her belly to investigate and pull some cells for a biopsy.  Or Matthew might have been referring to her being spayed, which would have been well before he was born but he might have seen pictures of her with that silly cone they put around their necks to prevent them from touching their stitches. 

“Yes, Brandi had an operation on her tummy,” I said, wondering where this would go.

“Did they have to put her to sleep?”

"Yes, they had to.”

“Did she have an operation on her penis?”

What?  Did he actually say ask that?  I guess he did. 

“Uhh Brandi was a girl.  Girls don’t have penises.”

“Oh, they don’t?” he said running back to the TV. 

End of conversation.  I can only imagine.