It's All About the Boy Parts

When Travis and I were first dating I took him through a litany of both hypothetical and real life situations where I wanted him to tell me how he would handle such things.  I really wanted to make sure that despite our raging attraction and general playmate friendliness that we would make a good match in terms of spousing and parenting. 

Shortly after we were married and I think I was pregnant with our first child, gender still unknown, we were once again discussing parental roles and who would be giving the sex talk to our children.  Because let's be honest nothing could possibly be more awkward than two parents sitting down with one child in the recesses of your home free from noise, distraction, and okay let's be honest normalcy to discuss sex.  After much debating we had decided on our family strategy.  Unknowing of the outcome, we had agreed that he would cover this topic with all the boys and I with all the girls.  Likewise we would carry this gender specific parenting style to other awkward conversations including but not limited to puberty and other such topics, I'll spare you the graphic list, because even writing them makes me feel weird.  Undoubtedly one girl and three boys latter I lucked out.

Well about a month ago the two boys started baseball.  They have been doing so good and this past Saturday was their first official game after a month of practicing and scrimmaging.  Early in the season mention had been made that all boys wanting to play the position of catcher would be required to wear a cup and that all as a general rule of thumb should be wearing one just because.  I thought little of it, until Saturdays game, Wyatt was killing it in terms of fielding the ball.  And the other team kept hitting pop up foul balls.  His coach called Wyatt up and asked him if he wanted to start getting the other team out by fielding these fouls balls.  Wyatt happily agreed and his coach verified he was wearing his cup.  Alas he wasn't and so with slight disappointment he looked at me where I sat on the first row of the bleachers.  His message had been clear, buy me a cup.

I made a note of this on my hand for that night's Wal-Mart run.  In the evening I walked into the store four kids in tow and found the section.  And as I stared at a moderately large display I died a little inside, because Kody is giggling with embarrassment and hiding his eyes while simultaneously shouting "that's for his dingy" and other ear catching phrases that garnered the glances of nearby customers.  And as I studied the back instructions for both correct sizing and usage on the back, I couldn't help but think - I got gypped.  Where is Travis now?  And do you wear these over underwear, under them, or do they count as your underwear?  And once we got home and Wyatt wanted to try it on and have me take a look to make sure it fit properly I felt borderline horror.  As you can imagine I opted for the over the underwear look.  And as he practiced running up and down the hallway to make sure it wouldn't interfere with his running, I started to laugh, and when he put his baseball pants back on I tried to contain my uncomfortable giggles at the protruding bulge. 

I'm still not certain we're doing this right, but hey it seemed to meet all the criteria outlined in my mind - protect junk, allow for movement, and when in doubt opt for the underwear.