Jackson asked me how the people on the back of my New Yorker were keeping their leafy underpants up, so I figured it was time to tell him about "God." He liked the part of the story where Adam got to name all the animals. Even though Adam didn't get to name the dinosaurs. "And you, with the horns all over your face, I shall call you Pentaceratops, which means five horns on the face, according to this Scholastic First Reader book I have here. It doesn't say which language it means that in, so I'm thinking Greek? Which hasn't been invented yet, but I'll take a page from the By-The-Good-Book-Christians, which will allow my historical timeline to be extremely flexible. And you there. You're a 'goat.' "

So we tried on the Bible Story socks, and they fit over our Science-Is-The-Answer feet, and Jackson seemed to take it all as just another Sunday afternoon on the couch with The Explainer. Jack and I occasionally discuss the relevance of religious education for el Niño. Jack knows the most incredible cross-dressing bass player, who spends his Saturday nights ripping into the Prince catalogue wearing barely more than a pair of six-inch heels and a pink boa, but Sunday morning he's the rock of the Baptist church band. So we're thinking of becoming, if not Baptists, possibly Baptist church band groupies. However, if I can give Jackson the widest possible education in the most religions in the simplest terms, I'll have done my duty.

My duty to turn him into a pantheistic, snake-handling Shinto priest.