One for the "Not What I Expected" File

After having been homebound for 48 hours by the confluence of my beloved's (well-deserved!) snowboarding trip to Canada and my son's raging, 104 F fever, the kids and I were itching to get out this afternoon. OK, it was mostly me, but I had a plan that would sweeten the deal for them. We'd return three videos that were two days late (I dropped and ran...can't wait to see the late fee on that one) and then drive through McDonald's to get Happy Meals for them and a shamrock shake for me. (I make this sacred pilgrimage once a year. It started when I was 16, and, in its inaugural year, it involved a blizzard, a huge white whale of a car, a ditch at a busy intersection, and two guys, one of whom I was dating at the time and one that I'd be dating shortly. But that's another story.)

The kids were rather frustratedly sipping at their shakes during the drive home—they don't call them "Triple Thick" for nothing—and listening to a collection of catchy children's tunes. "The Farmer in the Dell" was spinning as we traversed our last mile.

When the song ended, our eldest asked, "What does the rat take?"

In the version of this song that I've heard most often, there was no rat—there was a mouse, and it takes the cheese, an inanimate object that concluded things tidily. But in this version, the cat takes the rat, and that was that.

"I know!" our boy said after a pause. "The rat takes the black death."

'Well,' I thought. 'That's something.'

"What do you know about the black death?" I asked him.

"It's a kind of illness," he said.

"And where did you hear about it?" I asked.

"I read about it in 'Why Do Castles Have Moats,'" he said.

I have the Southwest Book peddler to thank for that one. He swooped upon me when I was the young, vulnerable mother of an 11-month-old who was just looking for an adult to talk to. His 19-year-old self was close enough. Sixty dollars later, I think he enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.