It’s Saturday afternoon, and you’re in a Toys "R" Us with your eight-year-old son evaluating the new stock of Mutant Leader action toys. This has become a part of your weekend routine, especially on rainy days. Besides, in the last two weekends, you’ve met three other bachelor dads at the store, including a guy from work you didn’t even know had been married, let alone a dad.

Your son is agitating about Mutant Leader Gold Edition, a six-inch tall spider-looking thing with gold accents on two of its plastic tentacles. He wants you to buy it for him.

“Dave, can I have this?” he pleads.

You wince. He’s been calling you by your first name for months, having decided for his own unexplained reasons to abandon “Dad.” Your ex thinks this is adorable, and tells you not to make a big deal about it.

“He’s dealing with the separation, Dave,” she tells you, while you stand in her new kitchen drinking coffee. “Let him process it.” Easy for her to say. She’s still “Mom,” and probably always will be.

Behind you in the toy store, a couple walking with a little girl overhears your son making his case for the purchase. “Dave, the Gold Edition works with my Green Edition. They go together. Can’t we buy it, Dave?”

You catch the eye of the other dad and smile sheepishly. He smiles back, but you already know what he’s thinking: So sad. That stepdad is trying to buy the boy’s affection.

You consider telling him what’s really going on. “No, no. I’m not his stepdad. He’s mine. I was in the delivery room when he… See, I’m going through a divorce, and my wife … my ex wife … she thinks I shouldn’t make a big deal about him calling me by my first name. I think it’ll blow over. What do you think?”

But the couple is already at the end of the aisle, turning right. They’re headed to Barbies, you say to yourself. Your son has put Gold Edition back on the shelf, and is now holding a miniature plastic machine gun, pointing its red-tipped muzzle nonchalantly at your zipper. “Can I have this, Dave?”

Last night, along with millions of other “Walking Dead” fans, I watched the series spin-off, “Fear of the Walking Dead” on AMC.

Here’s what I learned:

• The spin-off of a massively popular zombie franchise can impose a laughable number of commercial breaks into its inaugural episode, and we the audience will silently sit through them, immobile as the dead, and take it.
• Heroin addicts in Los Angeles are phenomenally attractive people who look, move and sound eerily like a young Johnny Depp.
• According to AMC, a blended family in L.A. isn’t Hispanic/White, Hispanic/Black, Hispanic/Korean or even Mexican/Guatemalan. No, “blended” refers to a white woman and a New Zealand guy of Maori descent. In fact, there aren’t any major Hispanic characters in episode 1. Have the producers ever been to L.A.?
• In the zombie Apocalypse, the guy you want on your team is a New Zealander of Maori descent who teaches English Lit. He’ll bravely search the abandoned church that serves as the neighborhood heroin shooting gallery/zombie rec room. At night. By himself. Armed only with a small flashlight. That’s one badass teacher!

 The top thing I learned from “Fear of the Walking Dead”? It doesn’t matter whether you’re an exceptionally attractive black teenager dating a pouty white girl or an exceptionally attractive, gentle and polite young black male (who in reality is a ruthless heroin dealer). You’re doomed, brother. Before the excruciatingly slow first episode ends, you’re destined to be a flesh-chomping zombie.

An old man calls his son and says, "Listen, your mother and I are getting divorced. Forty-five years of misery is enough." "Dad, what are you talking about? " the son screams. “We can't stand the sight of each other any longer,” he says. "I'm sick of her face, and I'm sick of talking about this, so call your sister and tell her," and he hangs up. Now, the son is worried. He calls his sister. She says, "Like hell they’re getting divorced!" She calls their father immediately. "You’re not getting divorced! Don't do another thing. The two of us are flying home tomorrow to talk about this. Until then, don't call a lawyer, don't file a paper. DO YOU HEAR ME?” She hangs up the phone. The old man turns to his wife and says, "Okay, they’re both coming for Christmas and paying their own airfares.