Let me set the scene:
It's the morning commute on a gray, rain-threatening day. The landscape, still crisp with fall colors though it is spring, rolls past our windows at 45 miles-per-hour. The boy is in his car seat talking non-stop about the things he sees - asking and often answering his own questions.
"Ders a guy with wandry. Where's he going? Maybe to da wandrymat."
"Can we go the wong way? I yike the wong way. It's faster than the short way."
The long way it is. Past school buildings and playgrounds. Past apple orchards and cattle ranches. Past miles and miles of fields.
"Is that a farm?" He asks as we drive past acres of wide open fields.
"Yes. That's a farm," I answer absently, momentarily wondering to myself if there will be a train at the crossing up ahead.
"What do they grow there?"
"Oh, I don't know," I say, trying to focus on his conversation. "It's a pretty big field. It could be hay or corn, or something like that."
"Don't they grow zombies there? I bet they grow zombies there."
I start to laugh. Of course he'd wonder about whether an iPhone app offered a window into the agricultural practices of the undead.
"That's just a computer game. There's no such thing as zombies."
"Well ... I think it would be fun if they did grow zombies. Because if they grew zombies I could keep one for a pet."
"If zombies were real," I tell him (as if this is the most natural conversation in the world to be having with a three-year-old) you most definitely would NOT want one for a pet."
"I would. I would keep him in a cage and feed him every day. I would!"
"What would you feed him?"
"I don't know. Zombie food. It costs five dollars and you can buy it at the store."
"I don't know how to break it to you bud, but zombies - which are not real anyway so don't go chasing nightmares - eat humans. And that makes it completely unsafe to own a zombie."
"Well ... If I had a zombie I would train him not to eat humans. That's what I would do."
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