Oh, I'm a bad Mama. Really bad. One of those moms other moms say "What is wrong with her? I would never do that."

My son got busted on the bus for having pictures of nekkid people. And yes, I spelled it the third-grade way to try to trick the search engines.

Let me explain, wouldja, before you click away and write my blog off as a Bad Mama Blog? I do have an excuse for everything.

Mr R wants to be an archeaologist. He spends hours carefully uncovering bottle caps and concrete chunks from the backyard using my makeup brushes specialized tools. His grandfather gave him a book, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia. It really is college level, but it has tons of pictures of dig sites, maps of the cities they are uncovering, cuneiform, and Mesopotamian art.

He reads it often - really! He took it to school to show his teacher his favorite book.

We've also used it in our homeschool curriculum, as we are using The Story of the World, Vol. I for history.

Here's the picture (Blogger won't let me upload my scan of the book, but Google helpfully found it for me.)


Here's the caption:

Unprovenanced fragments of the Akkadian relief, showing naked prisoners after a victory; a rare example emphasizing the high attainments of Mesopotamian sculptors at this period.

Even more embarrassing? Just last week, I sent Mr R's Animorphs library book back to school with the note that it was inappropriate for second graders and that he was not to check out books from that series again. (Seriously, I flipped through it, and the book starts with kids making jokes that their online girlfriend, who is so "hot", is really a 73 year old postal worker. Really? Internet pedophilia as a joke, in the second grade?)

I must add, that someone on the bus (Mr R? Or some other delinquent?) circled the private areas.

I've talked to his teacher and now I'm waiting for the Vice Principal to call me, while I eat crow at home. It's a good thing he didn't take in his Sistine Chapel coloring book.


How do you handle "cultural nudes"? And do your kids giggle at naked cherubs in religious artwork, too?

Labels: children, education