You want me to draw WHAT?

My son is dinosaur-happy. I'm pretty sure it's not my brother's fault, because he hasn't spent nearly enough time with his nephew for me to be able to blame him for this obsession. Perhaps it's genetic. Maybe we are a family of dinosaur-obsessives.

Last night, we were on the driveway playing with the chalk, and he asked me to draw dinosaurs. "Draw me a stegasaurus!" I did. "Draw me a triceratops!" I did. "Draw me a pachycephalosaurus!"

There was a long pause.

Me: "Honey, a what?"

Him: "A pachycephalosaurus!"

Me: "Hang on."

I went inside, grabbed the phone, and called my paleontologist brother. He was not available. I left a message. "Just calling to make sure I"m drawing the right thing. Pachycephalosaurus -- that's the one that looks like it's part Benadictine monk, part Jean Luc Picard, right?"

I went back outside. He started trying to explain. "You know, it walks up right, and has a round head with a ridge around it, and it goes BANG BANG BANG with its head..." (he's running into my thigh with the top of his head to demonstrate) "...and it can RUN..." and he runs off.

Whew! Dodged that bullet. But not for long. Back inside, he informs me that he IS a pachycephalosaurus. I found a book about the physiology of prehistoric animals, no kidding, that I read when I was on a business trip in Utah, years ago. One page of line drawings of dinosaurs. Yep, I was right -- it looks like Jean Luc. Noah pronounces this "his favorite page" of the book, and carries the book off.

I wish I had this much gusto, when I take on a subject. When he gets excited about something, I swear, he just rolls in it.