Leading questions

"Hey ... I don't suppose you want to come with me and the dog on a walk?"

I know how it sounds. It's an offer with a subtle twist of the arm as well as an escape hatch. The cast of it would have let the sdol slip the hook entirely.

This is why I am surprised by the somewhat enthusiastic "Ok," followed almost immediately by the clomping of feet on the stairs.

We had reeled him in. 

"I'll hold her," he says, taking the leash from my hand and opening the door. He notices the dog's elation as she chomps at the tether and bounds onto the porch.

"Is she always this excited for a walk?"

I consider answering with an outright lie: She's NEVER this excited; it must be your presence that has sparked such joy.

"Yeah. This is part of the routine. She'll hop around with her leash for a while at the start, then she'll get serious about surveilling the local squirrel population."

I don't clue him in that there will be a mile's worth of dawdling ahead of us with random pinpoints of unruliness inserted for excitement.

Nor do I outline all the remedies a dog's-life worth of repetition has taught me. That a fluffy puppy nearly minding its own business at an intersection may provoke an unneighborly reaction from our beloved pooch. Or we might pass each other like proverbial ships in the night. Like ghosts.

It's a crap shoot.

"That will be your job," he says as if he's heard my thoughts. He extracts the bag dispenser from the loop and hands it over to me. A ringing endorsement of my skills.

I could have predicted that.

But if I've learned anything about this ritual of ordinary life is that you can always be surprised.

Evidenced, in part, by my son's voluntary presence on this warm fall evening stroll, not to mention his enthusiasm for answering my intrusive questions ...such as "What are you working on in social studies?" and "What did you have for lunch?"

Questions intended to get him talking but invariably make him chuckle at his knuckle-headed mother: "Burgers and child labor. ... Which reminds me, we're out of milk; and if you wanted to pay me for the lawn mowing two weeks ago, I wouldn't protest."

It's not a bad deal. For the promise of some future payment, he reveals more about his day as he strains against the force of the dog and the unexpected extension of her bungee leash.

I learn about the school's therapy dog, who has a taste for footwear and has cost his owners plenty in emergency vet bills.

I learned about his non-plans for Halloween. Maybe he will go out into the night dressed as a weird monster from his twisted imagination, hitting the houses that don't get quite as much traffic. Using his decades of experience, he has deduced that the offset houses will offload armloads of candy just to be rid of temptation. Or maybe he'll just sit in his room watching YouTube videos explaining the hardships of life for children in Victorian England.

"Did you know that in England, a girl fell behind in her work at a textile mill and as punishment, they put her alone in a room with a dead body? True story."

"Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie."

"Ohh. Maybe that's what we'll do on Halloween, watch a movie. I heard they remade The Shining.

"I don't suppose you'd want to watch it with me?"

"You never know."