He did what with what?

I had just closed the front door early this afternoon, clutching a handful of newly delivered Christmas cards and a couple of bills, when I heard a yelp from the kitchen. Not a barbaric yawp, mind you. It was a Connor yelp, but not in one of its usual forms. It wasn't an I'm-furious-my-horse-won't-stand-up holler, or a my-sock-is-bunched-up-in-my-shoe growl. It sounded something like a small, surprised animal.

I had taken only a few steps before he came running toward me. He didn't say a word. Just stuck his tongue out and pointed.

"What?" I asked, seeing no signs of injury or destruction.

His pointer finger pumped like a piston at his now drooling tongue, and he raised both eyebrows, as if to say, "Hello! My tongue is what!"

I leaned down, careful not to get in the line of drool, and inspected it. It looked pink, kinda sandpapery. About what you expect to see in a healthy tongue.

I motioned with envelope-laden hands. "What, Connor?"

"I touched it," he said.

"Touched what?" I asked, but I knew. I knew.

"That." He pointed back toward the kitchen. There was no longer any question, really. But -- seeing that he didn't seem worse for the experience -- I wanted to hold onto the illusion a bit longer that surely, SURELY, my son (who, might I add, takes after his father very, very much) wouldn't do such a thing.

"Show me what you touched."

He stuck his tongue out again and pointed at it a bit peevishly this time.

"No," I began walking toward the kitchen briskly. "What did you touch your tongue on?"

He didn't comment. He couldn’t, really, since he had his tongue in his hand.

"You touched your tongue on the skillet, didn't you?"

I looked over my shoulder at him. He nodded.

"Connor, WHY did you touch the skillet with your tongue?" I removed it from the burner, on which I had briefly (it's possible to get the mail without stepping fully outside our front door) left a grilled-cheese sandwich browning on low heat.

He shrugged. And held his tongue. I examined it again closely and still saw no sign of a burn.

"Connor, haven't I told you never to touch anything on the stove?" He nodded. "That includes WITH YOUR TONGUE."

"Yesth, mahm."

I'm fairly sure he didn't know the skillet was hot. But he suspected it might be. So, he reasoned, the safest way to find out if it was hot or not would be to, you know, test it with his tongue. A tongue is wet, after all.

The obligatory moral of the story is never leave something hot on the burner, however briefly, when there's a four-year-old in the house. I shouldn’t have. If he had been seriously burned -- or burned at all -- it would be a different kind of story and I'd feel awful instead of mildly guilty. (Will there be a point in the rest of my live-long life that I don't feel some degree of guilt associated with parenthood?)

But a secondary moral might very well be, when instructing a boy never to touch the stove or items on it, be clear this includes with his tongue.

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