A Butterfinger, a munchkin and too many cows at the dairy.

Standing in line at Walmart. The woman in front of me had to be, or was at some time, employed as a packer of things. The items in her cart were so tightly compressed, not a bit of air remained betwixt and between. While she unpacked, stacking things one by one on the counter, her child sidled in front of my cart, and moved slowly toward the candy display. He was within inches of apprehending a Butterfinger when she barked, without missing a beat unloading her items onto the conveyor counter, “Don’t touch that candy! Step back! Put your hands in your pockets and leave them there!”
By now this kid is fixated on the Butterfinger, but he does slide his hands into his back pockets. I noted that, and imagined his mother trained him that way. Back pockets are further from candy displays.
I switched my attention to the check out progress, noticing the cashier required another shopping cart. All those squeeze-tight compressed items expanded after the bagging process, and there’s no way all that stuff would fit into one basket.
“I’m six,” the kid announced, holding up four fingers. He was staring at me.
“He’s five,” his mother barked, without glancing my way.
“Well,” I said to him, “five is pretty old. What do you do for a living?”
He flashed me a look of surprise. “I don’t do anything,” he said.
“Really,” I said.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“I write about little children like you,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why not?” I replied.
His hands had slipped free of the back pockets, and one was about to grasp the Butterfinger.
“Pocket those fingers, Buster, if you wanna keep them!” his mother said a bit sternly.
I was impressed she could see him, through the shopping cart. Maybe she couldn’t actually see him, but her radar was fine-tuned.
The kid re-pocketed his hands. Kind of like invisible handcuffs, I thought. Back pockets. Very effective.
“Why would you get fired for having too many cows at the dairy?” he asked me.
Wow, a little munchkin who speaks in riddles. “You got me swinging,” I said. “Do you know why?”
He shook his head.
Darn, I was thinking. I’d be trying to figure that out for the rest of the day. Why would anyone get fired for having too many cows at the dairy?
The cashier announced the total. The tight-packing mother-who-would-be-obeyed stepped toward the candy display and added two Butterfingers to her order. After she paid, I watched mother and child, pushing two carts filled with bagged items, heading for the exit doors.
I unloaded my few items onto the conveyor counter, then asked the cashier, “Do you know why anyone would get fired for having too many cows at the dairy?”
The cashier seemed stunned and a bit upset. I could tell, she was going to spend the rest of her day doing what I was going to be doing: Trying to figure out a confounded munchkin riddle.