Remarkable Part: My Father's Footprints by Collin McEnroe

 A conversation between me and my son about our aging but preternaturally young-looking dog.
"How old is Roy?" he asks.
"Twelve."
"How old would that be for a person?"
"I'm not sure. Do you multiply it by 7? If so, he's 84."
"How can he be?"
"Good care, good food. Lots of love. And I think he has good genes."
"What are genes?'
"The part of your body that says a lot about your health and how you're going to be in general."
"Do I have good genes?"
"I think you do."
"Do you have good genes?"
"Um. Probably only so-so."
"Who has the best genes?"
"Maybe God. He's been alive so long."

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"In third grade, there is a career pageant.
We are instructed to compose a couplet describing a future job. We must go up on stage with a prop or two and recite the couplet.
God help me, I am up there with a toy typewriter."

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"As Peter denies Jesus, I deny my father. I deny my third grade self with the typewriter.
In seventh grade, I announce to my parents that I intend to become a lawyer... I will forge for myself a career based on certainty and reliability... I will be the man in the Mustang convertible wearing the double-breasted blazer and the striped tie, not the man sitting in the living room at 1:00AM in his boxer shorts scratching out dialogue on lined yellow pads."

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"Children believe in little people. They believe in them because they haven't any reason not to believe in them. It takes time to learn to doubt. It takes the years of growing up. Each year that passes means believing in less and less of the things that dreams are made of and in more and more of the things that you can kick and pull and push and tickle, bite, taste, scratch and hit with a rubber ball. When you're all through growing up, you've stopped believing in great many things."

"But isn't that natural?"

"All the things that you don't believe in are still there to be believed. They're the charming things that make childhood enchanting. They're not less charming or enchanted because children grow up. They stay the same. Children change."