DISCLAIMER: I have chosen to maintain the anonymity of each “she” in the following quotations. And NO – they are NOT all me. Perhaps I didn’t say a single ONE of the following. (Okay – I did NOT say them ALL – half, maybe, but not ALL.)

While perusing:

“One day,” she said wistfully, “I’m going to buy a big ol’ larynx.”

A few days ago:

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I guess you just have to pee every day and hope for the best.”

Earlier tonight:

She replied wearily, “What she really needs is a poop shoot.” Long pause, blank stares – “Well, that IS the technical term for it!” With this the children concurred.

Lastly, a classic:

“I just want to rip those pants right off of him!” she said angrily.

CONFESSION: I confess: These quotes, even in their original contexts, were not necessarily any more coherent.

This contention would be more aptly supported if I could remember the precise discourse resulting from an advertisement on some “family” channel for a piece of schlock Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story remake involving two families with competing pizza parlors (I kid you not). I claimed that one really CANNOT remake Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare “borrowed” the storyline, after all, so any retelling of it now is just a cheap West Side Story rip-off (West Side Story, admittedly, was a very clever update, but even it was taken from the classic story that was based on a archetypal legend in the first place).

“Yes,”replied my sister, “You really couldn’t remake West Side Story unless you did it with dogs and cats.”

She went on to explain that members of the family had actually discussed this “non-traditional” casting recently, trying to decide whether it was more fitting for the cats to be the “Jets” and the dogs to be the “Sharks” or vice versa. We ultimately agreed that cats should play the “Sharks” and dogs should portray the “Jets.” Then we started thinking about the “casting pool” possibilities within our own troupe of family pets. MY cats won the female leads (Fiona, the lovely ingénue, Maria, and BeBe as the feisty Anita – she is the mezzo, after all). I believe we decided this after imagining what a splendid job they’d do of “I Feel Pretty.”

You may find this discussion already disquieting enough. Trust that instinct. But we persisted in setting up the casting and imagining the choreography for the musical numbers. The culminating moment, I believe, was when I said, “But I just COULD NOT cast Zeke as Tony.” Even we felt a little ridiculous then. (BUT any discriminating person would have to agree with me, as Zeke is a three or four pound poodle – a DORKY poodle at that. It just would NOT work.) We need more dogs.