A woman whose weekly quota of sleep qualifies as deprivation needed a nap. She trundled her two youngest boys over to play with me while she at least lay prone with the shades drawn.

I tucked the baby into a sling while her preschooler and I chatted over crackers. The conversation meandered between Legos and superheroes and bugs.

"There was a cool cockroach at the marriage conference. They didn't let me hold him in my hands but I touched him."

The description got more graphic though I confess my attention wavered.

Every year I engage the local nature center to bring half a dozen critters for an animal show in the children's program. It is a treat to watch the volunteer spin stories about orphaned owls and slimy snakes while two score kids lean in. There was one year when the person called half an hour after driving away.

"Excuse me but I think we left behind a spider. She was in a small lunch cooler. Did you find her?" The possibility of hunting for a spider made me shiver but someone braver piped up.

"Yes here it is." Great. I guess. The person on the phone was relieved.

"Tammy will be right back to pick it up."

There were no forgotten insects this year but for a solid hour a pack of kids listened with wide eyes. That was in February. Now it is April. Yet this little boy next to me held tightly to the memory. What's more he knew that it had happened at the marriage conference. Those multisyllabic words rolled off his two inch tongue as if such an event were as commonplace as a rescue in Gotham city.

He is four years old. And "marriage conference" is part of his working vocabulary.

Perhaps he will be more inclined to call for help if the forces of evil sabotage his marriage in twenty or thirty years. Because he has all those terrific memories stored up of spiders and cockroaches.