Come on, help me find a birthday card!

It's a sad state of affairs when parent and child together can't browse the greeting card aisle in the store for fear of viewing inappropriate messages. How do I know this? I was the parent, my son was the child and we were browsing the card aisle together a couple of nights ago.

My son and I were in search of a birthday card. He chose a card that appeared to be generic and simple, but after opening it and reading the message inside, he immediately brought it to me. With very big eyes and quite the concerned expression on his face, he told me this card should be pulled off the racks. I decided to check it out for myself. To my surprise, the card had the words "bitch slap" on the inside. How does one explain these two words to a 9-year-old anyway?

We put the card back and moved down... WAY DOWN the aisle.

Twice my son pulled out cards that had naked bottoms on them, and he was again appalled, saying, "That's disgusting!" Now... he's no goody-goody in that he's a typical little boy who laughs at typical litle boy things such as bodily function references, noises and the like. He just thinks naked body parts are shocking. That's okay with me. I'm sure it won't last, so I'm enjoying this phase in his life while I can.

The last straw was when my little man picked up a card that made reference to someone "being screwed." He wanted to know what that meant and frankly, I was not prepared to answer him right there in the middle of the store. I simply told him it was a slang word (true) and it wasn't a nice thing to say (also true).

We then left the card aisle, and I'm fairly certain I'll never return with my kids. I'm just waiting to hear what the little man will tell his father when asked what he did while Daddy was away. I can hear it now... "I learned some new words and I saw naked bottoms in the store." Oh boy!