The Cutness is coming to get you. Resistance is futile.

Behold, The Godson. How cute is he??

I know, I'm hardly objective. I have to give him big props for choosing the coolest character in the entire Star Wars lexicon for his Halloween costume. He's also very happy that Obama won the election.

Cool, gorgeous, funny and politically savvy! He takes after his godmother.

His mom emailed me to let me know that he has a girlfriend. He might have more than one; apparently he came home with two love notes this week. Naturally, this does not surprise me. I'm mostly just happy that he's friends with, and hangs out with, both girls and boys, still innocent of the deeper intrigues that overshadow and influence modern gender relations. That won't last much longer, of course. I jokingly emailed back that it's almost time for a "birds and bees talk," and inquired as to which parent would be handling that job. Suzi is adamant that it won't be her.

I remember having that talk with my mother when I was nine years old (if it were up to my father, I would probably still be ignorant about the bump and grind). Mom was an early developer who found blood in her panties at age nine, passing out in a Catholic school bathroom stall immediately after. She wanted to spare her own daughters the frightening experience of mysterious panty blood. She gave me one of those illustrated paperback books - you know, the ones with titles like "Your Growing Body," and had me read it. Then she explained the act of sex to me in very simple terms, making it very clear that what she had just described was, in fact, the reason for my existence, and hers, and everybody else's. Then we had a question and answer session, which was both horrifying and fascinating to my nine year old self. Thinking back, she was really very progressive. I have a feeling that it was more difficult for her to tell me that there was no Santa.

I remember my first love note, too; I got it in the first grade, when I was two years younger than my godson is now. It was left on my desk by Chris, a cute blond boy from my neighborhood that I was friendly with. We took the same bus to school. He was more of a jock; I was one of those weird kids who had learned to read by age three and used words like "asphalt," "landscaper" and "realm" in everyday speech. I taught myself to write in script by tracing my mother's handwritten letters, so I was able to read my fellow students' report cards aloud to them. First Grade Teacher was a battle-axe who had started her career in a one-room schoolhouse at the age of nineteen, and she was particularly hard on Chris for some reason. He was not a bad kid, but he was an overactive, fidgety type, which I could sympathize with, being antsy myself. When report cards came around, Chris appreciated knowing what his parents were going to be reading ahead of time.

One day, I got to my desk after lunch to find a sheet of looseleaf folded into a small square. Chris had scrawled "I Love You" inside, in black crayon. I took the note home and kept it in the drawer of my night table. I think I kissed him on the cheek once before the end of the school year. We were nice to each other. It was simple. Of course, second grade rolled around soon enough, and all was forgotten.

Years later, though, we got to talking in high school and he said, "You know, you were my first girlfriend." We laughed about it. Later on, I related the story to my mother, who went through her hope chest and pulled out Chris' love note, which she had saved. Being a teenager, I was embarrassed, of course.

But it really was sweet. And simple.