I reached inside the bag and brought out a bottle of white-out. I didn't remember buying the white-out. In fact, I hadn't used it in weeks, not since I had finally broken down and joined the masses and had replaced my manual typewriter with a personal computer, the day before, or the day after, my father died.

"May I put this away?" I asked.

He let me climb over his legs and enter my bedroom, where, in the bottom drawer of the dresser beside my bed, I found six more bottles of white-out.

I returned to the living room and the cartoon boy returned with me, climbing over the legs of his cartoon moose and sitting on the floor beside him. The cartoon moose and Bullwinkle finished their first Pepsis and handed the empty cans to the cartoon boy and me. We took the cans into our kitchens, threw them away, returned to our living rooms, and sat back down beside those hairy tube-legs that were almost as thick as our own waists.

Bullwinkle tapped REWIND, and the cartoon boy