A horse is a horse, of course

Anticipating that school vacation boredom would set-in sometime this afternoon for Eli, I picked up some DVDs while I was at the library this morning working on a project. I happened upon a collection of episodes of Mr. Ed, the sixties TV show that I used to watch on Nick At Night. We've tried to give our kids enriching experiences and broaden their horizons, and one thing that's been missing is a talking horse, of course.

I came downstairs to see what they were up to, and Eli and Nate had put in the disk and were glued to the screen. Mr. Ed was babysitting an infant while Wilbur was upstairs working on something. Wilbur came down, thanked Mr. Ed for his help and then walked him back out to the stable. On the way out, the baby started crying, and Mr. Ed said Wilbur needed to "hold his horses" while Mr. Ed changed the baby's diaper. [insert pre-recorded audience laughter] Wilbur said not to worry about it, that he would take care of changing the baby.

Eli, with a puzzled look on his face, turned to me and asked, "Dad, can you believe Mr. Ed thought he could change the baby's diaper? Horses can't change diapers!" Apparently the fact that the horse was talking in the first place was no big deal to him.