Miscommunication

As I listened to my daughter practice her violin, my young son began talking to me. He was reading his dinosaur book and asked me, "Do you know what a dead dinosaur is?" I replied, "What?" I thought his response was, "Stink." Thinking he said this, I agreed with him and told him that yes, dead dinosaurs are stinky. My wife overhead this conversation and stated emphatically that I needed to listen to my son's answer again. The second time around, I finally realized my son's answer to the dead dinosaur question was "extinct." I said, "Yes, yes, you are right!" I also thought that this was a pretty big word for a four-year-old, and if a dinosaur book helped him learn big words, then he could read his dinosaur books as often as he desires.