I get the biggest kick out of B. and the way his mind works; I never know what to expect. I know he’s naturally curious about a wide range of subjects, and I’ve always told him that he can ask me anything whether it’s about grammar, spelling, vocabulary or something entirely unrelated; that if I know, I’ll explain to the best of my ability, and if I don’t know, I’ll do my very best to find a satisfactory answer for him. Most of the stuff he asks, I can answer easily because it’s mostly things like how to know whether to use “me” or “I” in a sentence, or the definition of a word, or how to differentiate between homophones. Other stuff I can give at least a reasonably accurate answer, like the time he asked what would happen if he put a plant upside down in an entirely dark cupboard and put a light up at the top (asking whether plants were more affected by gravity or by photosensitivity). He’s asked me stuff like how we can tell the difference between a sound directly behind us and a sound behind us, but off to one side (had to research that one because I didn’t know myself), and why certain insects are the colours they are (sometimes I know that, sometimes I don’t). This time, though, he came right out of left field with….the question of whether male birds have penises. I have no idea what he was thinking about to prompt that question, but I laughed my arse off because out of the fucking blue, he says, “I want to know do male birds have any cock?” (he didn’t intend to be crude, just didn’t know the proper word.) I didn’t even ask why he wanted to know because I didn’t want to know the reason, but it was still interesting because in order to completely answer his question, I had to do a little research and learned a few things I didn’t already know. I already knew that most birds do not have anything that could really be called a penis–just a little bump in the cloaca that swells during breeding season–but some birds do have pretty impressive reproductive equipment, like this duck with his 42.5cm corkscrewed “pecker” (heh). It’s a good thing they keep the phallus retracted in the body because I’d imagine that swimming around a pond with this thing hanging down in the water might garner some very enthusiastic attention from the fish! 😆