8 November 1985, "Lakeside Review"
You've got to be careful what you say in front of preschoolers. Kids that age have a way of taking everything you say quite literally. According to my four-year-old, every word that proceedeth from the mouth of her mother is gospel.
If I tell her the cow jumped over the moon, she's gonna' be running outside in her PJ's to watch it come down.
Quite frankly, though, I'm not ready to have either my personal opinions or chance remarks canonized.
I'll never forget the time one of our older children was drilling for a science test.
"Now what makes an animal a mammal instead of a reptile or amphibian?" he asked at the dinner table in the presence of his little sister.
"Well," I said between spoonfuls of macaroni and cheese, "for the females, it's if they give live birth to their young and feed them milk. For the males, it's just if they have warm blood and hair."
"I see," my son replied.
Apparently, his little sis saw, too. The next time went went grocery shopping she stared intently at the male grocer, who bent his head down low to scan a bag of frozen corn.
"Mommy," she exclaimed in a stage whisper loud enough to wake the dead, "that man isn't a mammal!"
"Why not?" I made the mistake of asking before we were out of earshot.
"Because," she shouted knowledgeably while pointing to the poor guy's shiny pate. "He hasn't got no hair!
