TANG!!!

My eight year old son said to me yesterday, "Mom, you know what's weird? Our ancestors used to be monkeys!"

It was the end of a long day and I really wasn't up for a science lesson, but I also didn't want to let a good teaching moment go (because I never, ever do THAT!). So I decided to play it safe and see what I was up against, "You know about evolution, right?"

"Yeah, sure," he answered.

So far so good.

"Pokemon evolve after they get trained," he continued.

Ah, crap.

So I gave the abridged version of the truncated cliff notes...plankton (knowing he'd get the SpongeBob reference), fish, acquire feet, lose tails (except vestigial, of course!), yadda yadda, blah blah, start lactating, primates, you know the story.

I'm feeling pretty good about my parenting here, and my ability to condense the entire history of life on earth into five or so sentences (albeit somewhat inaccurate, to be sure), when my son asks, "Will humans ever evolve into something else?"

Good question, I've never thought about that. Other than when belting out the lyrics to the "Pets" by Porno for Pyros.

So I answered my son, "Good question. I've never thought about that."

We looked at each other for a couple of seconds, and he then said, "Maybe they will evolve into space aliens."

We sort of already are, what with our NASA diapers and all that yummy freeze-dried food.

"Honey, that is a very good guess. They just might."

And then he said, "Or maybe they will go full circle, and go back to being plankton."

I was torn between commenting upon his using the literary term full circle, or delving into his whole plankton idea was.

"Wow. You might be right," is what I came up with.