Over coffee

ME: Sophie! You’re lying down on the job, frittering your young life away!

SOPHIE: What are you talking about?

ME: These new fossils, the ones in the news today, they were found by Lee Berger’s nine-year-old son. You’re nine, you need to get to work.

SOPHIE: That’s cool, but if you want me to find something, you’re going to have to take me to a cave or something.

ME: I guess you’re probably right about that.

SOPHIE: What was he doing, to find a fossil?

ME: It says he was playing with his dog.

SOPHIE: Well, I’ll be happy to find you fossils if you get me a dog.

GRETCHEN: What’s this, you’re promising dogs now?

ME: Well, I’m not buying anything until she finds a fossil.

SOPHIE: I’ll start digging in the back yard.

GRETCHEN: You’re not going to find anything there.

ME: You never know, there could be mammoth bones.

GRETCHEN: So what are you going to do with a big hole in the back yard?

ME: That would be a perfect place to keep the dog.

GRETCHEN: Oh, great. We’ll be the family with the dog pit.

ME: A dog pit with a mammoth skeleton. It will be like a theme park in our own yard.