I'm not going crazy!

Last week I started losing towels. One day it was the husband's towel in the upstairs bathroom (and he had the audacity to use MY towel instead - I HATE being stuck with a wet, pre-used towel!), the next day a towel from downstairs was missing, the next day another one from downstairs plus one from upstairs. By the next morning, I was really going a little loony. I couldn't figure out where the towels were ending up. They weren't in the dirty clothes, or in the dryer, or being used as a fort by the kids. They had disappeared. *poof*

So I was in the kitchen talking to A. who was out in the living room, and I was discussing the towel shenanigans that seemed to be going on. I asked if he was in on the shenanigans, to which he replied...

"Huh?"

"The towels that are missing. Do you know anything about that?"

"Nope."

"Hmmmm. Do you think N. knows anything about it?" (She was still sleeping).

"Mm mm mmm." (translated: "I don't know")

"I'll have to ask her when she wakes up."

So when she did wake up, I related the story of the missing towels, and how brother seemed to not know anything about it, and did she maybe know. She exclaimed that she knew exactly who had taken my towels, and ran into her room to bring out... a storybook. In it was a story that her daddy had read to her the night before about an Invisible Imp that played tricks on people. While it seemed as if there were likely an imp amongst us, I was fairly certain it wasn't invisible. But I still had no towels.

By the kids' bedtime that night, I was at the end of my rope. I finally demanded that if anyone knew anything about the missing towels, they really needed to speak up or we'd all have to start drying ourselves with washcloths. A. hopped off the bed, ran over to the husband's closet, and swung open the door to reveal a pile of towels deep in the dark depths within. Mind you, A. was laughing hysterically, and I finally figured out I'd been duped by my 4 year old. And the husband thinks anything that sends the wifey over the edge is pretty darn funny, too.

As parents, we were struck by two simultaneous reactions to this. One being a tiny bit of pride in this prank pulled off by our clown of a 4 year old. The fact that he chose something that I'd notice was missing, hid it in a place I'd never look, and that he'd chosen something that wasn't in danger of causing mom to completely go ballistic (like if he'd hidden all the shoes in the house as we're late heading out the door). To all that we say "Bravo!". Yet at the same time, there's the fact that he didn't break under interogation. Granted, it wasn't a bright-light-in-the-face type of interrogation, but still. He had me going for days on end, and I was clueless that my sweet little Imp had anything to do with it. We are so in for trouble in the years to come! So, the good news is that I'm not going crazy... yet.