Because I said I would

I forgot to tell you a cute story. But since I stood there, in Barnes & Noble, and told these strangers that I was going to tell this story on my blog, tell it I will.

It's about a tow-headed little two year old, so that means it has a substantial cuteness rating before anything even begins to unfold. And so....

....I was standing at the end of one of the bargain books aisles at Barnes & Noble, looking at an intriguing mystery novel, a series I hadn't yet known about, but it looked like it had possibility. A man was wandering around nearby, his wee son perched parrot-like atop his right shoulder. The father was pointing at assorted book covers and in a pretend excitement voice exclaim "What's that!?" The boy would look down from above and answer correctly. Of course dad was carefully selecting images for easy recognition. A man. A car. Another man.

I guessed, correctly, that there was a mother somewhere in the store trying to browse in peace and quiet and dad had volunteered or perhaps had been volunteered to be in charge of child entertainment while she finished her shopping.

The reason I had picked up the mystery I was holding was mainly because it had an odd and intriguing cover - a wolf in a dress sitting in a chair. (See it for yourself) As the father and son moved close by I decided that the animal image would appeal to the little boy and so I held the book out for him to see (Yes, I'm strange. I regularly talk to strangers. Some would say I regularly bother strangers....)

The dad seemed happy for the help in keeping his son entertained and so he repeated my comment with his own "What's that?" The boy looked it over carefully and with conviction announced...

"Vacuum cleaner."

Now, this is certainly an amusing answer, but the dad had an exceptionally long, solid laugh about it, even taking into account that one is always more amused by one's own child then other people are. The mom walked up at that moment and the dad filled us both in on his son's logic. Not an hour earlier they had been at a friend's house and the friend had put a plate of food on the floor for his dog. He had commented that the dog "wolfed that down like a vacuum cleaner."

Wolf = Dog = Vacuum cleaner!