The Pink-Horse-Moose-Fox

The really fun thing about having small children is taking the occasional liberty with their complete and utter gullibility. They know next to nothing and believe you know everything. That’s a recipe for fun.

You have to be careful, of course. You don’t want to do anything that lands them in therapy for years.

What Karl did tonight is probably therapy-proof. I hope.

John Matthew was looking at the pages of his oversized zoology book. He was on the freshwater animals page, asking tons of questions: What does this one do? What does that one eat? What would happen if you ran into this one? Then Karl launched into this conversation:

Karl: “John, do you know what the neatest freshwater animal is?”

John: “No. What?”

Karl: “The Pink-Horse-Moose-Fox.”

John: “What’s that?”

Karl: “It’s a freshwater animal.”

John: “Where does it live?”

Karl: “It lives in streams. If you’re ever in the woods and you sit down by a stream and you turn your back to the stream, it reaches out and taps you on the shoulder.”

John, whose command of animal facts is super-impressive for a four-year-old, is very tuned in at this point and clearly wants to know everything about this new creature.

John: “What does it do?”

Karl: “It conjugates verbs.”

John: “Oh.”

Later on, I found John engrossed in the book again. He asked me on what page he might find the pink-horse-moose fox that “conshutates terds.” He’d been trying to find it for over 20 minutes. I had to tell him that it’s a new species, so it isn’t in this old zoology book. He’s now asking constantly if we can go to the bookstore this weekend to find a book that will have the new pink-horse-moose-fox in it.

That’s the one problem with taking occasional liberties with their gullibility. It’s hard to work your way out of the story gracefully.

B.