Today Joshua asked me the question every parent dreads.

No, it wasn’t “Is Santa Claus real?”

It wasn’t “Where do babies come from?”

Instead, over lunch, he turns to me and asks, “Dad, what’s in a hot dog?“

He didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop laughing.

On the one hand, there’s a part of me that wants to be honest with him. I mean, doesn’t every kid deserve to know that the hot dog he’s eating contains mechanically-separated pig snouts? Or pig lips? Or pig brains? Now that I think of it, a better question might be, “What’s not in a hot dog?” On the other hand, hot dogs are like one of the four major food groups for a kid, especially when you’re four. I can’t burst his bubble yet. And besides, the kid is going to be a ballpark rat and I don’t want to be the Dad at the concession stand ordering him a soy burger.

I resisted the urge to give Joshua some kind of funny, sarcastic answer that only I would get and instead responded with a cryptic, “Son, you don’t want to know.” My mysterious answer seemed to placate him; he shrugged his shoulders and went back to his Oscar Meyer. Here’s hoping I can as easily appease him when he asks the inevitable Santa question.

As for the birds and the bees question, we’ll let Mommy field that one.