Are you married?

Though I said I couldn't remember the specific order in which these events all happened, I distinctly remember a conversation I had with the 7 year old the day we met. After his mother introduced me to him and we began to get to know each other, he started asking me all those random questions little kids tend to ask. I had asked him his age, which at the time was 6, and then I told him that I was 13 years older than him because I wanted to see if he could add the two numbers together to find out how old I was. He gave me the answer and then told me, "I know what 13+6 is because I'm already in 2nd grade math even though I'm in 1st grade." (Five months later, I've realized that 1st grade is no longer the same from when I was back there. He's currently learning how to multiply.) After he told me that I was 19, he then said, "So that means you're married, right?" When I heard him ask me this, I was kind of confused so I told him that just because I'm 19, it doesn't mean I'm married. His response was, "But when you're 18 years old, you're an adult. You get married when you're an adult. So since you're 19, that means you have to be married." I had no idea how to respond to his reasoning, so I simply told him that just because I'm an adult, it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to be married.

The next day, while I was helping him with his homework, it was as if the conversation we'd had the day before never happened. He asked me all the same question, including "Are you married?" Not wanting to get into that explanation again, I later asked him mom why it was that the 7 year old thought that because someone is 18 or older that it means that they automatically have to be married. She then told me that because kids in elementary school tend to do those "playground marriages", that she told him that he was not allowed to get married until he was 18 because that's when people start getting married. I guess he understood that because you're 18 you should be married within that year. I have no idea, but I'm so glad I haven't had to explain this to him again because he didn't understand it the first time around.