My youngest has been completely obsessed with underpants ever since the Great Potty Training of 2015. It reached a new height last week when, during an indoor game of rainy day hide-and-seek, she hid under my maxi skirt as I stood at the stove cooking dinner. (An ingenious move in my opinion.) What should have been a brilliant hiding place didn’t conceal her for long because she fell on the ground roaring with laughter as she pointed and me and shrieked, “Mommy, you wear panties!”

Ever since the day of Hide-and-Seek, she’s been unable to control her laughter whenever she looks in my direction. She starts to giggle whisper “panties” and then collapses in peals of bubbling laughter. No amount of maternal disapproval was enough to deter my lingerie enthusiast. The running joke all week became her older siblings saying, “Mommy wears..” and she stammer-laughs her way through “ppp..aannn..ties.”

By Sunday morning, I thought I’d finally squelched it for good. She’d been mum on my underwear for at least a day and a half. I was wrong.

All throughout Mass I watched the corner of her mouth twitch whenever she looked in my direction. By the Sign of Peace, she could no longer contain herself. As she shook the hand of the dignified woman behind us she giggled, “My mommy wears panties.”

That saintly woman gave my daughter a mischievous smile, leaned forward and whispered, “Me too.”  I’ve never loved a stranger more.

As we turned back around and my over-sharing daughter curled up in my arms, she looked towards the altar at the Crucifix. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open as she whispered, “Everyone wears panties” in a reverent voice.

I saw it coming, but was too slow to shush her before she pointed and announced to the entire hushed congregation,

“Hey! Jesus is wearing panties just like my mommy!”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a priest laugh that hard in my whole life.

I know I’m not the only one with an over-sharer. What secrets have your little ones told at the worst possible moment?

Photo credit: Crucifix By User:Lucien leGrey (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons