Man v. Food is an outstanding show, and my 3-year-old son agrees. Except for one episode where Adam Richman goes to Baltimore and eats crabs. Long story short, Ethan sees, in one scene, buckets of crabs alive and well. In the next scene, those same crabs are being eaten.

Ethan: Daddy, what happened to the crabs?

Me: They got cooked.

Ethan: But what happened to the crabs?

Me: They got cooked.

Ethan: But can they still move?

Me: Uh…

Ethan: Are they fake?

Me: (sigh of relief) Yes. They’re fake.

Being an effective parent means having the ability to tell a series of lies. There are a lot of uncomfortable conversations you have to have with your child as he or she gets older, and the longer you can put them off, the better. Eventually he’ll learn that Santa isn’t real, his sister didn’t just magically appear in Mommy’s belly and that the cat didn’t decide to get his own apartment. (That hasn’t actually happened yet, but the cat isn’t helping himself at this point.)

But the discovery I fear the most - for the moment at least - is when he realizes that burgers are made of cows; that chicken is actually a chicken; and that, no, the crabs can’t move anymore.

And every time I read him a book with a friendly fish or a magical cow, it’s only making it harder for me down the road. Because one day he’ll experience the horrifying feeling we all had the moment we realized there’s an outside chance dinner that night was Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web. It’s a guilty feeling we’ve learned to ignore every time we sit down to eat a 15-oz. steak.

It’s just a little more innocence lost, I suppose, same as when he realizes I’ve been lying to him about things this whole time.