Sometimes it's like looking into a tiny little mirror.

Tonight was guy's night at our house. I took my son out for dinner on the way to his gymnastics class. We had a really great time, and he was unusually talkative about school.

So we're sitting there over hamburgers, talking about his friends, talking about his classes, talking about the games they play at recess. A lot of it is very similar to what we did. They play a lot of the same games, even the ones I thought were obscure. Comparing my school experience to his was a lot of fun.

I was shocked to find that the public school system has completely failed to teach him to play kickball, but that's another story.

We started talking about the more artsy things like their music classes, and he told me he doesn't like music. I asked why, and he told me that he hates to sing because he's a boy. Only girls like to sing, apparently.

I quickly corrected this by pointing out that there are lots of men who sing, at which point he brightened and said, "Oh yeah, like that guy from Kiss!" (I filled in a few gaps in his rock education a bit at this point. God, I'm proud of that kid.)

Even thus informed, he maintained his staunch anti-singing position, telling me, "It's okay. Everybody else sings pretty loud, and the teacher can't hear who's making noise and who's not. I just move my mouth. Nobody can tell." He followed this statement up with a demonstration of his fakery skills, with the caveat that "you'll be able to tell 'cause there's not a bunch of other kids singing."

The parent in me was dying to have a little chat about correcting that behavior... but he had pretty much described exactly how I got through more or less every class I ever took where they expected me to sing, too.

I called my mom to tell her the story while kidzookie was in his class. She and dad had a long laugh at my expense.