I was making Play-Doh animals with my four-year-old niece Chris and her three-year-old brother Neil. While Chris was clearly molding a recognizable dog, figuring out what Neil was making was a bit more challenging. "It's a cat," he told me, "but a truck ran over it."

Sometime later Chris had made another simple animal shape, but Neil had a rather flat slab of dough on the table in front of him.

"What happened to this animal?" I asked.

Neil shrugged and said simply, "Same truck."