The Oeuf Room

This just in: We now know where babies come from before they are but mere lusty sparks in their parents' eyes! I was reading a book to my two sons called On the Day You Were Born, by Debra Frasier. It's a lovely book featuring the green sea turtles and the magpies and all the ocean whelks and such welcoming the new babe to the lovely green planet, with song and dance, under the shining sun and waxing moon etcetera etcetera. Nice cut-paper style illustrations!

Anyway, my eldest son asked something nice and profound such as "How did the baby get to the earth?" So I turned to youngest son and asked "Well, where were YOU before you came here?" I figured he might have some pithy little tale to report.

He answered without hesitation, in a shy little voice with a perfect French accent. "The oeuf room."

"The what?"

"The oeuf room," he said, a little louder and wth great confidence. I asked him to repeat this one more time, so sure he seemed of his origins.

"Oeuf. As in...the egg room."

"Yes, da egg room."

I turned to eldest son and inquired where he might have been passing the time before descending on this fair planet. He, also, answered with a second's hesitation: "The Dick Room."

"Did you just say 'The Dick Room'?!"

"The Dick Room," he said emphatically. A thoughtful silence followed. They both looked very philosophical and solemn, as if remembering their time in that pre-dawn netherworld, not yet quite human, just before they broke free from their respective rooms and found themselves suddenly here, alive and on our planet.

"What was it like in your rooms?" I asked. This was going to get somewhere good, and I would have lively information to report to science journalists everywhere! But just then the two boys promptly leaned in and gave each other a good, cracking headbutt, which ended the evening's conversation.