I am still amazed at this whole child-rearing thing. As luck would have it�he is essentially very easy going� and has only had a single kicking/screaming/total-meltdown once in the past month. [Watch me eat those words in the coming couple of days. Bet.]

So. Serious boy was studying my big-ass-Escher-esque ankle tattoo tonight (from the vantage-point of his tub.) He was asking why I had gotten it if the needles had hurt while putting the ink in all those layers of skin (as I had explained the difference between temporary tatts and indelible ones a month or so ago.)

I laughingly told him (make-it-up-as-I-go-along-Sauce-here,) that I get a tattoo every 17 years when the cicadas come out (as the first�Uncle Duke, from Doonesbury--was at age seventeen and the second�you get the picture.) Although noisy bugs are a fave-topic, he remained undeterred. �Why did you get it if it hurt?� So�(being the non-introspective and naturally oafish male I am, ) I had to think about the fact that I didn�t really have an answer.

My skull was racking along with: I really wanted a second one? This time something less-cartoony? I really like fish and geometric ones seemed cool at the time? And on.

Before I could track down an actual, honest to Allah, answer�he went on. �And why don�t they make needles that don�t hurt? If science is so much better than when you were little, dad, could they do that? Why do we have to hurt at all? When I scub my knee, we should have the pain turned off.�

Feeling more in my element (losing the why DID I? was nice,) I went into the physiological rationale for pain. I took him through why Lepers had/have-to self-check for damage. I dug into all the things that we might do that would hurt us without our knowing�and what might happen if we just had random damage all the time.

Then we talked about nerves and the fact that the same little roads/pathways are used for pleasure�and how turning off the pain would turn off the cool feeling you get when you pick up a frog, get a hug, feel a tickle,

His big gray/blue eyes looked up at me and said, �Then I wouldn�t get so-nice-feeling from you if Mommy were OK, and I didn�t feel a big pain about that?�

Thud.

[Mentally going crap/and good at the same time� Good that he is putting in five-year-old-time THINKING ABOUT missing his mom�s attention/mental-there-ness, et al. And a big unadulterated CRAP that he has to go through this shit.]

I carefully explained that he was sort-of right; that the things that are-extra-hard do-make the things that are-deeply-good seem that much more joyful. But that, if his mother were whole and capable�he�d still get just as much Good Feeling from his dad, and be lucky enough to have both. Pain just is pain at that point. You never know what good will come of it�and in what ways you might be different as a result. But that it is part of the deal. It is part of us being lucky enough to be born human�and have all these cool things to think about and learn and live through.

DaSon said, �I am happy I am a human, dad. I don�t like pain. Maybe we�ll have better science when I�M OLDER�and be able to turn it down a bit. That would be nice.�

And he was off into something else.

And I have been arguing his case for and against �turning it down� ever since.

--DatThoughtFilledSauce