NOW He Tells Me!

Um...remember how sometimes the Mansion seems to have other inhabitants? The kind you can't see? The Pony casually mentioned an incident of which I was unaware. Casually mentioned, when I was asking him why he was up last night at 12:30 a.m.

The Pony is generally a sound sleeper. Always has been. I could lay him down in his crib or bed, and he would be asleep within minutes. Unlike the #1 son, who slept about five hours, intermittently, on a good night. Yep. The Pony is a snoozer. Even his daycare lady bragged on him. The minute he laid down on his little cot and pulled the blanket up, he was out for two hours. So when I heard him walking above my head last night at 12:30, I thought maybe he had been sick. I thought of it while we were out at my mom's house with my sister the ex-mayor's wife, cleaning out some belongings.

"Why did you get up last night?"

"I didn't get up."

"At 12:30. I heard you walking. You went in the bathroom. Then the water ran for a long time. I thought you flushed the toilet."

"No. I wasn't up. In fact, I had a text, and I didn't even answer it. I was tired."

"Then what was that water running for? It doesn't turn itself on."

"Well, maybe it was like that time you heard me or #1 get up and try to flush the toilet, and then when you came to check, we were both sound asleep."

"That was very odd."

"You know why those kind of things happen at your house, don't you?' It's all those animals you kill and bury." Sis thinks she knows everything.

"Nellie says hello." Snort.

"That was funny, but it was CREEPY! You have a dark side."

"Aunt Sis is laughing."

"Which is not meant to encourage you."

"Oh, Aunt Sis. A couple of weeks ago, I was in Mom and Dad's bathroom around 9:00, running water in the big tub for a bath, and my soap jumped in the tub by itself. It's a bottle of soap with a pump top. It sits on the side of the tub, up against the wall, not even near the edge. And all at once, it just JUMPED IN THE TUB BY ITSELF! I was walking over to the sink, and I was looking that direction, and I SAW it! That is impossible! It has never done that before. It just shot off the side and into the tub."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked." That's my Pony.

My bathroom is at the other end of the house from where I usually hear and see things. Though in the last year or so, when I come up for bed around 2:00 a.m., I sometimes feel like something has just run to hide when I step into the bedroom and enter the bathroom. I tell myself it's just those tiles creaking from my steps across the living room. Every now and then, when I'm in bed, I hear creaking again in there. Or a sound like a toothbrush falling. Never anything strong like those disco parties that sometimes go on for an hour or so in #1's room above my head.

We'll see what develops when The Pony is gone to Boys State next week.