The Difference Between A Dog And A Child

Don't take this post the wrong way; I love Danny more than I could ever love any pet. But there are times...

Danny is my nine-year old son. He's a joy to have around, and a delight to know. But, as with most kids, they have their moments. Take this scene from the Shabbos table.

Danny was eating some cholent. Being a nine year old, it is his sacred duty to eat in the messiest fashion possible. There is not a single clean tablecloth east of the Mississippi that he has not defeated and sent cowering for the nearest washing machine. They have all come before him and he has sent each one down to defeat and Clorox.

So, naturally, this Shabbos was no different. As befits his status as a nine-year-old boy, his place was suitably arranged with bits of cholent, challah, grape juice, soda and other assorted bits of unrecognizable foodstuffs all over the table in front of him. As Danny was gesturing wildly, a nice chunk of cholent falls off the table and lands on the floor with an audible plop. Everyone at the table freezes and stares at Danny. It's almost as if time itself has frozen. He looks guiltily for a moment and utters the most illogical words one can utter under these circumstances. He looks at us all and says, in a completely straight face:

"I didn't do it."

Now, if not for the fact that everyone at the table saw him gesturing wildly with his fork, and if not for the fact that every single person at the table saw the food doing it's best impersonation of a catapult stone being flung from his fork, and if not for the fact that the table had fallen to complete silence by this, so that when the hunk-o-cholent hit the ground it landed with a highly audible PLOP, he might have gotten away from it. It seems that Danny still has yet to learn the meaning of the phrase "plausible deniability."

"Danny," I say, in my best exasperated-father voice, "please go clean up the mess you made."

"But I didn't do it!" he countered. And we spent the next five minutes arguing about whether or not he could have done it. Once we convinced him that everyone at the table had seen it happen, we spent the next twenty minutes arguing about the possibility that an advanced alien civilization kidnapped him, replaced him with a duplicate, caused the cholent to be tossed on the floor and then his being returned back to us without any of us noticing. After all, we can certainly understand why aliens would need to travel thousands of light-years across space just to put cholent on our dining room floor. Galactic peace might have just depended on that piece of cholent being on the floor at that moment.

Got to hand it to the kid, he's quite a salesman, trying to sell us anything. I wouldn't have been surprised if the next tactic would have involved time-travel from the future.

Enter Dusky. Dusky is a three year old German Shepherd who will eat anything. Well, almost anything... I don't think he'd eat himself - but anything else is game - dog food, people food, bugs, rodents, slippers, newspapers, tires, the Mayor, whatever...

So, while Danny is trying to convince us that the piece of food on the floor is irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial life, Dusky comes along and quietly, but efficiently, takes care of the problem. So much for proof of alien life - the dog just cost my son his Nobel prize.

And that's the difference between kids and dogs. Dogs will fix your problems for you without being asked. Kids will be ever-creative in finding ways to get out of fixing messes they've caused. Now, if only the dog could do Danny's homework...

=====================================
Glossary
Shabbos - Sabbath
cholent - a mixture of beans, meat, barley and spices usually served at the Sabbath meal. In many cases, it can also double as rocket propellant.