What starts with "P," and soon?

Primo's class had a pajama party, so this is what I sent with him. The P's are pineapple, the puppy's head is cheddar, his ears and the stars and moons on his pajamas are Havarti. The pajamas themselves are black forest ham, the nightcap is corned beef. The tablecloth is Muenster cheese with corned beef overlay. There are radish slices underneath it. The pear on the plate is ... pear. There's a turkey-breast base beneath it all and the yellow stripes are mustard. I intended them as lines on wallpaper, but they also kind of look like the headboard of a brass bed. My wife suggests, and I agree, that they also resemble prison bars, which would score me a bonus P. Honey-roasted peanuts round things out up top.

Primo was able to correctly identify it as a puppy in pajamas. He even recognized the pear, but not that it was on a plate. I got an unearned "P" credit because Primo thought the checkered tablecloth meant the puppy was on a picnic. Secundo looked at it and said "that's a woman."

Primo is lucky enough to go to the same school as two of his cousins, and we often wait for them after school lets out so we can say hello. That's usually about the extent of what gets said, but it's a nice routine nonetheless. Sometimes, depending on where everyone is parked, we'll walk together toward our cars, which is what we did on pj party day.

His oldest cousin is one of the sweetest, most earnest girls you'd want to meet. She is also a sixth-grader and on this occasion she was brandishing a pink folder with the sort of intricate doodling that suggested having to listen for a long time to talk about a subject that couldn't completely hold her attention. It's hard to understand what took the lecturer so long, as she summed everything up for me, her probably-not-close-enough-for-this uncle, during the 30 to 45 seconds it took for us to walk to my car.

"Hi, Uncle Kai."

"Hey, kiddo, how are you?"

"I'm okay. I've got to bring this folder home with me, though."

She's a little bit put-upon when it comes to homework. No biggie.

"Oh, yeah?"

"It's about puberty."

When is it not, really?

"Ahhh."

"My teacher says that when we get to high school we're going to talk about sexual relations."

Sometimes in class, even.

"Hmmm..."

"And how if you have sexual relations with someone who has AIDS, you can get AIDS, too."

 I'm not sure what they're saving for that high school lecture they told you about. That pretty much covers it, I think.

"That's true."

"The girls got this folder. It shows how your period happens. I think the boys got one that talks about boy stuff, and I think the girls will look at the boy folder and the boys will look at the girl folder later."

Again, maybe in class, even.

"Well, it's good for boys and girls to ... understand ... each ... other ... better?"

Ah, my car!

"Yeah. Is Primo in his pajamas?"

And she was off to ask Primo about his pajamas for the final seconds of our walk together.

Maybe I'll borrow that pink folder so Secundo can have a look before I make another puppy lunch.