The other night, I was reading a magazine while my 3-year-old nephew ate dinner.

“Wait wait wait!” he yelled.

“What?”

“You have to go back and get that,” he said and pointed to the magazine.

I flipped backwards and saw one of those paper subscription ad inserts.  “This?”

“Yeah!” he said.  “Get that!”

Well, okay.  I don’t mind him asking for a useless piece of paper because it’s better than him asking me for soda (not allowed), candy (I probably ate it all first), or inappropriate movies (though his two favorite movies at the moment are Hellboy and The Dark Knight, both of which his father let him watch).  I tore out the insert and handed it to him.  Diplomatically, he slid it back across the table to me.

“No,” he explained, “You need this for your tampons.”

“Um…what?”

“Your tampons,” he said, slowly and deliberately, the way he always talks when he thinks I’m a hopeless idiot who doesn’t understand anything.

“Mm-hm,” I said, taking the paper insert.  “I’ll keep this, then…for my tampons.”

He finished his dinner and I finished the magazine, and we sat around for awhile playing Where’s Waldo until his mom came home.  I told her about the tampon episode, and she guessed that maybe he’d seen someone take a tampon ad out of a magazine?  Which is nice, because it means he’s being thoughtful and cares about my finances.  As I was leaving, I asked him if he wanted the paper back for the tampons.

He rolled his eyes.  “I don’t need tampons.”