I'm sitting in the living room while my family is talking. My wife is listing off four digit numbers. Lisa is agreeing with her. "One-six-three-three." – "Yep." – "Four-two-two-two." – "Great!". Seems like a game, or maybe household accounting.

"Hey, " accuses Lucy, after my wife reads off a number, "I've heard that one before, what is it?"

"Grandma's phone number."

"Grandma's phone number is 010-6847-8680."

"That's her phone number now." says Eunjoo, "It used to be 4531-6794. But Seoul has so many tigers, she had to change it."

I might have misheard that. I've never seen a tiger in Seoul. I've never seen one anywhere in Korea.

I go and look it up. Apparently, there used to be tigers in Korea. But the last one ever seen was killed on an island off the western coast in the early 1900's.

I guess my mother-in-law could be that old, but how old is my wife to have been around when an explosion in the tiger population necessitated regoinal area codes.

"There are tigers in Seoul?" Lisa asks, worried about the trip they are taking up to visit her grandma next week.

"That's where the baseball team gets its name," Eunjoo lies to her.

"I guess I'm going to have to take my gun." Lisa says to herself, and goes and starts rummaging through her toy box. She pulls out a black, brushed metal, long nosed revolver.

I remember buying her a nerf gun for Christmas, but this one is new to me.

"Has anyone seen my bullets?" she asks.

I don't love the thought of Lisa carrying a gun and live ammunition on the train to Seoul, but I like even less the thought of her unarmed when a tiger attacks. Anyway, my job isn't to make the rules, it is to break them.

"I have some in my sock drawer, Lisa." I say, just be sure to put the socks away again after you get them out.

I keep all my stuff in the sock drawer: my electrical tape, my tweezers, my pencil leads, my box of Sharpies. I put them there to hide from my family the things that always go missing. But they have come to know that I do this, so I am now constantly picking up my clean socks of the floor where my family throws them to get at my stuff.

"Okay, Daddy." says Lisa, running into my room.

"And bring them out here, so I can check that they are the right gauge." I don't have a gun of my own, I just have a box of assorted bullets that I have picked up while walking about campus.

Breaking rules and checking gauges, that's a Dad's job. I'm really starting to grow into the position.