In Which Teen Learns About Cleavage

In my best French, and by French I mean English in an Inspector Clouseau accent, I said goodbye to Sacha our exchange student. Despite numerous failed outings—the beach with the nuclear power plant on the shore, the Celtic rock concert where he plugged his ears, the blues festival where he sat out in the rain--in the end Sacha’s visit was saved by laser tag, aka Laser Skirmish in Australian.

Yes, in the end we bonded over infrared simulations of combat.



Anyway, I was sad to see Sacha go—for that meant my family would no longer put their best feet forward. Blows over watching Sponge Bob or Zoey 101 would return, with the Ten-Year Old Boy vying for Zoey.

But I digress.

Conventional wisdom would lead you to think that after three weeks of playing tour guide for a French teen, I could relax. But no. Because we are taking another family vacation.

If any of you in the blogosphere recall that oxymoron of a family vacation I went on a mere few weeks ago, you’d think I am a glutton for punishment. A term which probably has a much hipper synonym in the Urban Dictionary .

But what about the cleavage, you ask. How far down do I have to scan this freakin’ blog to get to the cleavage?

Stay with me.

OK. So Sacha leaves. We pack the car (five painful hours, but that’s another story). We are traveling on the turnpike. I’m driving.

In a rare moment of quiet after Daughter and Ten-Year Old stop fighting about Mario games, Teen Son who is actually reading a book calls out, “Hey, Dad, what’s cleavage?”

Without hesitation my eBayer says, “cleavage is the crease between a woman’s breasts that shows in their tops. Like the ones your mother is always wearing.”

No response.

A few minutes go by and Teen abandons his book.

“Why did you stop reading?” I inquire.

“I can’t understand this book,” Teen says, frustrated. “Dad told me what cleavage is but it’s still doesn’t make any sense.”

Then it occurs to me where the confusion comes from. Teen is reading The Education of Little Tree. It’s a memoir of a Scottish-Cherokee boy growing up in the 30s in remote mountain hollows. Cleavage in this case probably means a separation or a cleft.



Which is unlike the cleavage showing in the tops that Teen’s mother is always wearing.



And unlike the celebrity cleavage found on Extremely Funny’s blog. Cleavage like this:



I don’t know what the term for cleavage is in the Urban Dictionary or even Australian. But I think Teen’s got it now.


******


IF YOU HAVEN'T ENTERED MY CAPTION CONTEST THERE'S STILL TIME. I'M ON A FAMILY VACATION, which tends to increase alcohol consumption. So I'm not sure I'll be capable of making a decent decision any time soon. (And if you feel like, leave a caption for that hideous picture of me and my cleavage.)

Vote for this post at Humor-Blogs where there is plenty of the good kind of cleavage.