On the way down to Oxnard to pick up Jackson from a sleepover Sunday morning I was going back and forth between Patton Oswalt's Finest Hour and Aziz Ansari's Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening, and by the time I got to Jackson's friend's house I had tears running down my cheeks from laughing. So when Jackson got into the car I was all, You have to listen to this! It's so funny! I often forget that Jackson's not 30 years old, and then I'm lunging for the power button to turn off something that I only that second realized is completely inappropriate for someone who's actually 10. Fortunately, we were only about four blocks away from his friend's house (i.e., before he heard anything that would change his life for the worse) when Jackson paused my iPod and said, "Mom, I saw Britney Spears yesterday."
Me, of course, I was thinking, Sure, you saw somebody who looked just like Britney Spears, ha ha, put Aziz back on. So I said, "Oh, really? Hm."
But he insisted. "Mom, I'm not kidding. I saw Britney Spears. She brought her kids to the trampoline place." And then I remembered that we live in Southern California, and that Britney probably lives somewhere in the Valley and has two little boys who would totally want to spend their Saturday afternoon at a place filled with trampolines. I pictured Britney chugging a Big Gulp, kicking off her Uggs, and jumping right in until somebody got a black eye or hit their chin and bit off the tip of their tongue.
I wasn't sure what else to say. It's not every day Jackson sees a celebrity so I thought it would be polite to be interested.
"What was she wearing?"
"Some green bathrobe thing."
"Uh, hmm. A bathrobe? Did she jump on the trampolines?"
"No, all the parents were standing around her. She had four bodyguards. I know they were bodyguards because they had those curly wire things coming out of their ears."
I knew that was the end of the conversation because then he put Aziz back on and we didn't talk the rest of the way home.
