I will NOT get a dog. Will NOT.

Sam has been asking for a dog for a while. We talk about it, and then I ignore him. Mostly we talk about the different kinds of dogs he wants. His first choice would be to have a dog like Blue, the clue-leaving, game-playing, animated blue dog. I can understand that. If we could have a dog like Blue I would be down with that, too.

But, see, we can't. Because Blue already belongs to Joe. Duh. While I try to indulge my children's every whim, every once in a while they come up with something that I just can't produce.

Still, whenever we see a dog on the street, Sam says, "Oh, we could have a black dog like that!" He said that today on the way to school and my somewhat-shorter-than-usual fuse resulted in a terse response of, "No. No we could not."

Terseness doesn't work with children.

So Sam asks why.

"Because dogs are a lot of work. They need to be fed and walked . . ."

"And I could give him a bath after we play in the mud together and we can wrestle . . .!"

Dude. This was not meant to be a slow motion series of touching vignettes starring a boy and his dog. Also, I don't think you should wrestle with dogs. What is it WITH boys and wrestling? I don't get it. STOP WRESTLING. READ A BOOK.

So I respond with the best shot I have, "And they POOP. When you have a dog you have to clean up it's POOP."

"Well, he can poop outside."

"You still have to clean it up."

"But why?"

"So you don't step in it. You don't want to step in dog poop."

"Well that's okay. We clean up Owii's poop. Maybe we could put a diaper on our dog."

"No. Because that would be weird. Sam, dogs are just a lot of work and I don't want to do that right now."

"But Daddy could do it. And I could help!"

Aw, that's cute. Also it is a lie.

At this point I realize this is going nowhere so I just tune into the radio for a while. Until . . .

"What should we name our dog?"

Sigh.

"Dude. That's up to you. I have enough to worry about trying to name this baby."

"Her name is Lily."

"Really? I thought you liked Abby better?"

"Well, but Abby has really ugly hair."

"Do you even know an Abby?"

"What?"

"What?"

And that, my friends, is what happens when you have kids. You have conversations you can't even follow.