Stuart Little, Chicken Little, whatever ...

My son picked up a box on the couch, looked at the cover and then looked at me.

"Mom, what's 'House'?" he asked, holding up a DVD set of the TV show "House" I had just borrowed from my brother.

"House is the last name of a doctor," I told him. "He works in a hospital with sick people."

My son looked vaguely alarmed. So I decided to calm him down by using a term his second-grade class had just learned.

"But the show is fiction," I emphasized. "House isn't real. He's just a character." Then I made what I thought was a brilliant connection. "In fact, the actor who plays House is the same actor who played the dad in Stuart Little!"

My son just looked at me for a minute. Then he started laughing - laughing really, really hard.

"THE CHICKEN??" he finally said, gasping for air. "HE WAS THAT BIG CHICKEN??"

Um, what? Then I realized his mistake.

"No, no, honey," I said. "Not Chicken Little. Stuart Little."

He stopped laughing and slid off the couch. "Oh," he said, hardly as impressed. "Okay."

Don't pay any attention to him, Hugh Laurie. I still think you're great.