“Daddy, what are booshes?”

“I’m sorry what?”

The little man was sitting in a lawn chair next to me enjoying a quiet evening in the yard.

He crossed his legs and gave me a straight-lipped smile. “Booshes. What are booshes?”

It took a moment for my brain to run the translation routines. “Oh,” I said finally, “bushes? Like trees and bushes”

He nodded politely. “Yes!”

“Well,” I glanced around at our empty little suburban yard, the neighbor’s neatly trimmed grass, the only visible trees on a hill two lots away. My poor little boy didn’t even know what a bush was. I took a deep breath. “So, bushes are like trees. They are like short trees. Like…” I pointed to the corner of the yard, “like our raspberry patch over there.”

He turned to look at them and folded his hands in his lap. Then, after a few seconds of thought, he nodded. “Okay,” he jumped out of his chair and quickly started walking across the yard pumping his tiny arms at his sides. “Me going to go to the bathroom on them booshes then.”

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!”