Je suis un cheval!

Mom and I are sitting, exasperated, at church while everyone's exiting as the priest is up at the altar baptizing some "young adults."
The priest told the congregation not to leave, but you know, who listens to a priest?
It's 8:40 PM... WAYYY past normal mass hours, but we're still stuck in the building (it's so hard to keep my cool in there lately... although the man's pretty cool and funny, I don't like sitting in church until 8:30 PM when it's only supposed to last until 8 PM. Exciting Saturday nights I lead, huh?).

Rather than exit the church, I take a seat next to mom (I follow directions, so what?).
Next to mom is my friend "Sunny"'s mom and Sunny's nephew. The kid (I think he's 2 or 3) is sitting there... acting like... a dog. He pants, stick his tongue out... shakes his "tail," and all that good stuff (he'd refrain from barking because his grandma would shoot him death-stares with any slight noise coming from him). Mom's equally bored as I am, so she decides to strike up a conversation with the boy.
Mom: So, do you have a puppy at home?
BoyPuppy: ...No...
BoyPuppy's Grandma: No, this kid thinks he's a dog...
Mom: Oh.
BoyPuppy's Grandma: I get angry because he'll act like this everywhere we go! Then Sunny gets mad at me because she's tells me "Mom! Leave him alone! Don't you know all little kids try and act like their favorite animals?!"
Mom: (laughs) Yeah, it's true... at least he chose a small, fluffy animal. My eyes over here (i.e. ME) thought she was a horse when she was a kid.
(EMBARRASSING! Thanks for sharing, Mom!)
Mom: And around that same time, my brother-in-law was more upset because his son thought he was a turtle.

In my defense! I blame it all on the Maya the Bee and David the Gnome (part of the namesake of my Henry David Thoreau the Gnome that travels with me everywhere, very a la Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, seen here and here) cartoons my relatives would force me to watch as a means to placate me (Ok, so I wasn't SO forced to watch. I'd chose those cartoons over things like Eureka's Castle... Eureka scared the shit out of me with those flexible horns of hers). They made anthropomorphism seem normal.
You can't blame me for having an overactive imagination...
AND my cousin thought he was a NINJA turtle, ok... not some sort of... boring pet turtle. Big difference!

God, those were the days...