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"Who among you, if her son asks her for bread, will instead give him a stone?"

I was paraphrasing, and quoting out of context, but she didn't know that. She was just a foolish, naive, ignorant, innocent young girl. She'd begged and pleaded for the opportunity to raise a pet. The goldfish just hadn't been enough, either. Oh no; she wanted a mammal.

So the baby gorilla came home with me one day, fresh out of acting school. This little guy was GOOD. He could play dead with the best of them. He could even slow his heart rate to a crawl on command.

And after a few tough "teaching" days, I'd asked him to help me teach my daughter this lesson. He feigned a choking attack, gagging on a bite of apple and collapsing melodramatically onto the ground in his backyard climbing area.

Now tears were streaming down her face, and she was pleading with him to be okay, desperate for this not to be her fault.

As I somberly misquoted the scripture passage, I wondered if I had gone too far in teaching her this truth.

Then he leapt to his feet with a grin, and I knew I'd been had.