I was vacuuming the living room. With-a-Why, my ninth grader, was doing his homework and talking to me at the same time.
“What’s your favorite comic strip?” he asked.
“Peanuts!” I yelled over the sound of the vacuum cleaner.
“What?” he said. His voice sounded horrified.
“Peanuts!” I yelled even louder.
I turned the vacuum cleaner off and looked at him. He looked, hurriedly, down at his paper with kind of an embarrassed expression.
“Are you too young to remember Charles Schulz?”
“Oh, that's what you meant.”
“What did you think I said?”
“Uh, never mind.”
