“Mommy, when God made the whole world, was he really sweaty?”

“Of course. That was a big job.”

“Yeah, there are a lot of houses here!”

*

“Mommy, you smell like meat!”

*

“Hey, how old do I have to be before I can say bad words? Six? Seven?”

*

“Mommy, you have a lot of lines on your forehead!”

“That’s because I worry a lot. I need to stop that.”

“Yeah. Maybe you should put a Band-Aid up there. That might work, too.”

*

Above are snippets of conversations I’ve had with my 4-year-old son in the past three days.

First he makes me laugh, and then he makes me think. His imagination knows no limits, and he’s curious and vocal about his quest to know and understand all.

And when he wants to know something, he asks — even if his question, by most standards, is offensive in polite society.

I once chased a little person down at an arts-and-crafts store to apologize because as she walked by he shouted, “Mommy, why is that woman so tiny?”

She gave me a puzzled look as I breathlessly repeated what he had said and then groveled for her forgiveness for having given birth to a boy who would say such a rude and insensitive thing.

She hadn’t even heard him.

Talk about embarrassing.

Luckily, the woman, who was there with her daughter, understood one of the golden rules of parenthood.

Our children are going to say some things in public to make us cringe at least once in our lives and possibly lots more.

They test their limits. They experiment. They want to know about anything and everything. They often look at the world from a different angle and develop ideas based on that wide-open view.

My boy is now in the phase where he’s trying out those aforementioned bad words.

It sounds like he has learned a thing or two on the playground while Mommy and Daddy were hard at work (or, worse, he has been listening to Mommy and Daddy when he was supposed to be fast asleep or watching “SpongeBob Squarepants”). I can’t say for sure which it is, but I am keeping the faith that this phase shall pass.

In the meantime, I’m keeping a log of all the sweet, funny and clever things he says, sans the cussing, of course.

He’s helping me look at the world in a new light, too. And, who knows? Maybe there’s a brilliant idea in there for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Eu de Bologna, anyone?