I have long been concerned that my relationship with my oldest child was more friendly than motherly and he doesn't really need another friend. Just recently I have come to the conclusion that we have a pretty decent balance of both. He gets bad grades, I take action. He does something well, I rejoice and I make sure he feels proud of himself. It seems to be working. So well in fact that I now know probably all but the most private longings of my teenage son. He tells me about school, about his friends, how he feels about his dad's other children, the whole deal.

And I am loving it.

These conversations with my son are great on two levels. They let me know our relationship is solid, which is the most important thing. The second benefit is some unbelievably strange comic relief.

Thanks to my son I now know:

* A few days ago when he was visiting a friend, his friend's uncle filled a bucket with gasoline, set fire to a nice long stick he found in the yard and tossed it into the bucket, causing the stick to be propelled into the air like a rocket and the gas to disappear in one huge flame. They never found the stick and since no house fires were reported in the area we assume nothing was damaged as a result of Uncle Firebug's demonstration. When the boys looked to him for comment, Uncle Firebug stated and I quote, "Sombitch really flew, didn't it?"

* My son and two of his friends are about to start doing serious filming now that their experimental film has turned out so well. Their plan is to do stunts like they saw on the CKY DVDs, starting with footage of John's bud Joey tipping trash cans. Not quite as riveting as I had hoped but it could definitely be worse. At least they aren't tipping cows.

* All of the students in my son's math (I think), class initiated the new substitute by pulling the old group cough gag. The sub was less than amused, but I thought it was funny as hell. Don't ask me why.

This is the best:

* One of John's friends, when asked by the teacher to describe to the health class the process by which babies are made, gave the following explanation:

"Well, the guy takes his pecker and puts it in the girl's cooter and pumps it for awhile. It usually takes a long time, but eventually she has a baby."

The teacher went slack-jawed for a moment before telling the boy that this was the most vulgar explanation of the reproductive process he has ever heard and that he was sending my son's friend to the office.

Note: by this time in the story I was holding my sides and throwing back my head, laughing so hard I could barely move.

Back to the story.

The teacher wrote a note to send with the boy to the office. John said it looked a lot like this; so-and-so was using vulgar language, specifically the terms, "pecker and cooter".

I don't know how the guy wrote that note with a straight face, because I wouldn't have been able to do it. I'm just ill-bred enough to find that entire situation hysterically funny.

Oddly enough, the fact that he seems comfortable enough with me to tell me these stories is drawing my son and I closer, but I'm not sure if it means I'm a bad mom. I guess if I were a good one I would have told him to not repeat things like that here and give him a hard time for laughing and encouraging the less than gentlemanly behavior of his friend. However, my baby has never been a school disciplinary problem (knock on wood, yup yup), and besides, it really was funny. I guess perhaps John's struggle to keep from laughing while trying to tell me about it was the funniest part. It had to be seen to be truly appreciated.