At 7 a.m. this morning, Sam came downstairs and handed me a hand-written note.

“Aww, Sam,” I said as I poured myself a cup of coffee. “Is this a sweet note for your mommy? What a great kid you are!”

Then I looked down at the piece of paper that was covered in his 7-year-old loopy scrawl and read the following:

Plaxico Burress 2 years at jail.

At New York for 2008 gun incident in nighclub.

What the hell? Now fully awake, I immediately quizzed Sam about what the note meant. “I was just watching ESPN upstairs and saw this news. I thought you’d like to know,” he said. “By the way, can I have a muffin?”

See, even though he’s just in second grade, Sam still watches the pro football highlights because he considers himself to be an NFL expert. Each week, he and my dad have a conference call during which Sam tells my dad which teams to pick for that week’s pool. (So far, Sam’s way more accurate than Chris Berman.) Last month, my dad even sent Sam a guidebook from a Nevada casino’s Sportbook to help him make more informed decisions. Of course, you can imagine how thrilled we were when Sam’s teacher told us he regularly pulls out his “Bet the Pros!” book during independent reading time.

Anyway, I’m happy that Sam has something special to do with his Papa, and once he can start making his own bets and get his mommy a comped steak dinner at Bally’s, I’ll be even happier. That said, what I’m not too pleased about is all of the other stuff the pro football players are teaching him.

“So, mommy?” Sam asked as we walked to school. “They said the incident was in 2008, but why is he going to jail now? I thought bad guys went to jail right away.”

“Well, Sam…there’s a little something called ‘bail’,” I began, then our discussion quickly moved on to other kid-friendly topics like Felonies, Court-Appointed Lawyers, and what exactly constitutes a “Flight Risk.” By the time we reached school, Sam knew exactly what to do if he was ever arrested.

“So, I rent a car, drive to Mexico and hope they don’t try to extroh-dite me?”

“That’s right, Sam,” I said as I kissed him good-bye. “That knowledge will definitely come in handy some day. Oh, and one last thing—-you should never, ever carry a gun into a nightclub, but if you do…”

“Don’t stick it into my sweatpants!”

Honestly, with this kind of education at home, I don’t know why he even needs to go to school.