Ahh, the perils, the jumping to conclusions, the misinterpretations, the misunderstandings...

I'm speaking, of course, about five-year-old-speak. The kind of talk from kids on the verge of kindergarten that can sound like one thing when it really means something entirely innocuous and innocent.

"Mom, I saw a cont!" the little guy said earlier today.

"Excuse me?????!!!!?!????!!!!!" I said, ready for miffed parent educational lecture mode. Because I didn't hear "cont". I heard something entirely different. You know, the rude, crude, and socially unacceptable term for a part of the female anatomy that comes to mind when you drop the "o" and replace it with a "u".

"You know, Mom. The first part of the word on the airplane!" the little guy said, happy with his reading epiphany.

Oooo-kay. My jets cooled. The panic button was depressed a second time, shutting off the adrenaline. He was talking about one of his toy airplanes he'd received from his secret Santa at school. A Continental 737-800."Let me know if you see anything else that starts with 'cont', okay, Mom?" the kid said in his most admonitory, administrative tone. And of course he would ask me this, because he had this revelation about the letters of the alphabet where? Where else?

In the car, of course. In which we could pass by any number of signs that would start with those four letters. Not that we did.

If I ever end up with high-risk insurance rates to pay, it will be because I let the parental discipline adrenaline run away with me while I was driving the car. Pray for us, y'all.