While the girls and I were all piled in the car running errands recently, one of the older girls saw a sign that listed a phone number and said, “Private Eye. We catch cheaters.”

The other one said, “What’s a cheater?”

I held my breath and tried to look invisible behind the wheel. I know we’ve had the birds and the bees chat with the older girls, but I am pretty sure the subject of infidelity never came up and the word “cheater” was never used. As I crouched down in the driver’s seat trying to go unnoticed, while still driving between the white lines, I listened as my girls discussed all of the possible definitions of the word “cheater.”

“They’re talking about Cheetoes. I love Cheetoes. Except when they make your fingers turn orange and you lick them but your fingers are still orange. That’s gross. Then I’d rather have Ruffles or something.”

Phew…so far I’ve escaped a really difficult topic. They’re completely off track and now they’re talking about food. That’s a good sign. Please don’t ask me, please don’t ask me, please don’t ask me, I chant silently in my head.

“No it says, ‘Cheaters,’ like someone who cheats,” the oldest one chimes in.

Ugh-oh. This sounds like dangerous territory. Should I intercede before she blurts out more info than I’m ready for the younger ones to hear? This could open up a whole can of worms I’m not ready for.

“I hate when so-and-so at school tries to cheat off my spelling test. It’s so annoying,” whines my other daughter.

Hooray! Another tangent. I should be safe, but we’re still many minutes from home. Maybe I should turn on some Taylor Swift or the “High School Musical 3” soundtrack and throw them off. If nothing else, it will kill the conversation.

While I’m fumbling around looking for some music,  my brilliant and comedic four-year-old burst out with, “Cheetahs! Cheetahs! I a cheetah! Or you a cheetah! You can’t catch me Mr. Eye. I run fast, fast, fast. I-uh-cheet-ah.”

Everyone’s laughing. Keep laughing. Keep thinking about cheetahs. While you’re laughing I’ll begin praying that my fact-loving oldest daughter will begin spewing a laundry list of data about cheetahs.

“Cheetahs run so fast! How can anyone catch a cheetah? That’s humanly impossible,” she said as she begins telling us exactly how many miles per hour a cheetah can run and how long they can sustain that speed.

Of course, my middle daughter didn’t go down without a fight. She spouted back, “But if he was a super fast runner then he could totally catch the cheetah.”

“And if he had magical powers, like Dora and Diego,” chided the youngest.

The sounds “uh-uh,” and “uh-huh” going back and forth were music to my ears as I knew that my children’s innocence to the awful things of the world were pushed back just one day further. And I was spared from enlightening them.