My triplet boys are identical twins. And something cool is that they’re mirror identicals: where B has a dimple on one side of his face, K has one on the opposite side; where K has a freckle on one side, B has it on the other; etc. Fortunately, both of them have their internal organs in the correct places. Sometimes with mirror identicals, one of the twins has his or her organs on the wrong side, which can be life-threatening in a medical emergency. (Imagine being opened up for surgery on the wrong side of your tummy!) I’m glad neither of my boys will have to worry about that. Anyway, they look and think a lot alike, and they enjoy the same kinds of play.

I think in sets and organization (the typical condition of my house notwithstanding). I want all of the Duplos to be in one bin together, all of the wooden building blocks to be in one bin together, all of the Brio train parts to be in the Brio bin together, and so on. If they’re scattered all over, you can’t really play with them, right? My boys, on the other hand, are free-thinkers who like to collect things in disorganized randomness. Case in point: Here is a list of the contents of a small, worn-out Thomas the Tank Engine backpack that I found tonight in a corner of our family room. Note that, with a few exceptions, these are sad, lonely parts from bigger sets, many of which sets haven’t really been able to be enjoyed as intended due to some of these individual parts being hidden away for who knows how long in this backpack. In the order in which I pulled them out, the backpack contained:

• A small pink Crocs-style shoe (just one)
• An odd bowl-shaped piece of blue plastic (no idea what it is…maybe a lid from something?)
• A toy screwdriver
• A very small book about time capsules, from a Chick-fil-A kids’ meal (I don’t buy kid’s meals at Chick-fil-A)
• Minnie Mouse’s little pink car (no Minnie Mouse)
• An orange letter S (made out of closed-cell foam)
• A yellow plastic top part of a toy watering can (and now I know what the blue thing is…it’s the bottom half of the toy watering can, lol)
• An open-top truck or golf cart or something for a Fischer-Price person to drive (no Fischer-Price person)
• A tiny dog with a “Build-A-Bear” tag on it (my guess is that it was actually out of a kids’ meal from somewhere)
• An odd, hard, round yellow thing (no clue what it is…)
• The letter P, also made out of closed-cell foam, but this one’s a different type of foam and much thinner than the first
• A yellow “C”-shaped toy from a set of link things that snap onto each other, but there’s only one
• A flash card with the letter f and the word, “fox” on one side and a cartoon picture of a fox on the other
• An Arthur (the PBS cartoon character) action figure, dressed for summer camp
• An empty sandwich-sized Ziplock bag
• A toy four-wheeler with no back wheels
• A Paw Patrol action figure (I’m so lame, I don’t know who it is…it’s a police dog wearing a pirate hat; maybe someone can fill me in on that one)
• A 2×2 Duplo block wrapped tightly in cling wrap and decorated with Easter egg stickers
• A flat yellow wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• Ben Elf (from Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom, a favorite of ours from the U.K.), flying a wheeled helicopter
• An X-wing fighter
• A wooden “right triangle” building block
• A wooden letter block with the letters X, B, C, and Y plus pictures of a xylophone and two candles in a candle holder on it
• One soft, teal-colored doll shoe
• A yellow letter R, this one is wood with a thin layer of magnet on the back side
• A Brio-style train car (this one’s a passenger car)
• A tiny drag racer
• A Christmas-stocking-shaped red plastic cookie cutter
• A red play “nut” from a tool set
• A green 2×4 Duplo block
• A clear rubber spider
• A blue letter N, this one is plastic with a hollow back with one rectangular magnet in the middle
• A blue wooden person figure from a Brio train set
• A flat blue wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• A blue Hot Wheels race car with fancy decorations and the number “6” on the sides and the front hood (but it’s a four-door…not sure how that works out on the race track)

(That was a lot of blue!!)

• A flat cutout of a brown bear, mounted on a magnetic back
• A Ninja figure, ready to throw a grappling hook with a rope tied to it
• A bit of thread/string that’s half apple green and half yellow with an ombre fade in the middle
• Three pieces of tan-colored dog or cat food
• A silver, uninflated balloon
• One square white sticky note, decorated on one side with an abstract crayon picture and decorated on the other side with fake letters in ball-point pen ink
• Another flat blue wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• A small rectangle of paper that seems to be one corner of a page from a toy catalog
• A blue oval plastic “toy link” (the kind that can be part of a chain to keep toys from falling off of a stroller and onto the ground)
• An uncolored extra-small-format Minion coloring page
• A green wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• Yet another flat blue wooden shape with one side that’s magnetic, except that this one is a trapezoid
• Some toy figure’s missing in-line skate
• A blue wooden number three with a magnetic coating on the back side
• A blue plastic letter S with a hollow back side and magnet in the middle
• A blue wooden number six with a magnetic coating on the back side
• A green wooden number seven with a magnetic coating on the back side
• A flat cutout of a turtle, mounted on a magnetic back

On a smaller scale, we find “groups” of objects like this all over the house. Sometimes they’re in a paper lunch bag, sometimes in a box sealed with duct tape, sometimes in a plastic bin or other container with a lid, and so on. On multiple occasions I’ve come close to throwing away some part or another of a nice toy set, thinking that I had picked up some trash the boys had left behind but then having it occur to me to open it and finding the object(s) hidden inside. Sometimes I’ll open a discarded envelope that’s thicker than it should be and find two or three unrelated toys from different sets. And on a larger scale, the boys make what we call “midden piles;” piles of similarly random toys except that these piles include big items like stuffed animals and (single) gloves and (real) kitchen utensils and books and things, tucked under the piano or in a corner of their closet or behind a chair. It’s hilarious and cute and frustrating and endearing.

And that, my friends, is how my little boys roll.

• 

This is not a story about running.

Let me start by stating for the record that I’m not known for my skills in lying. I have a history of messing up even the most benign versions of deception. I’m just not good at fibbing! So last night, it took all of my concentrated feeble powers to pull off a giant hood-winking; one of stellar mom-proportions. Whether the lie will stick remains to be seen. The victim could potentially still smell out the rot at the core of my spun-out yarn, so to speak. Here’s what happened:

The Set-up

Halloween is a medium-sized deal at our house. We go to the effort of decorating the front porch, but in comparison to the masterpieces in multiple nearby neighbors’ yards, our decorating is a bit weak: Pumpkins and gourds, some dried corn stalks cut from the garden outback, fake spiderwebs and even-more-fake spiders on the handrail going up the steps. That’s about it. Inside, I usually fix a special “fall” themed meal, put a batch of spiced cider on a burner (as much to make the house smell good as to be consumed), serve raised glazed doughnuts, stuff like that. I ALWAYS play “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” on the TV at least two or three times during the evening.

This year, the triplets, who are six, got off to a bit of an early start. Our church hosted a neighborhood “trunk-or-treat” in a parking lot at a nearby park the evening before Halloween, so even before they woke up yesterday morning they already had piles of candy in their orange plastic jack-o-lanterns. And then last night, they dressed up in some regurgitated costumes and we took them trick-or-treating at our local grocery store, where some of the employees manning their department candy stashes encouraged the kids to grab as much as each of them wanted. (This was the second event for A’s costume, an Elsa outfit left over from a non-Halloween“princess” birthday party; it was at least the third time B and C had worn their Crayola crayon costumes, their call. Ryan wore the“crayon box” costume. He’s a really good sport.)

Actual trick-or-treating was a bit brief. It was cold, and since the trips already had so much candy at home, their motivation flagged a bit after they had hit their main targets, the homes of closer friends who had special treats waiting for them.

After they returned home, the two boys decided they would be in charge of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters who came to our house. For some reason, in an act of generosity I had not seen before in any of my six kids, B chose to hand out candy FROM HIS OWN STASH! He came to the kitchen and asked me for a bowl to dump his candy into from his plastic jack-o-lantern. At first I didn’t understand what he was wanting it for, and I pushed back a little. I was busy cooking. He got a bit frustrated with me, but then I clued into what was going on and found a plastic bowl for him. So now visitors were greeted by identical twin boy crayons, each holding out a bowl full of candy for them to choose from.

This mostly went well. But there were two hiccups for B. The second wasn’t a huge deal. A kid looked into B’s bowl, his face brightening up considerably when he spied—and he grabbed—a full-sized candy bar. I was sure B would lose it right then, having overlooked the big candy bar in his stash. But he didn’t let on if he was upset at all. I breathed a sigh of relief. No meltdown! But the other, earlier hiccup turned out to have a lasting impact.

Here’s what went down: A young mother came up the steps in a cute costume, carrying a small critter-costumed baby in a front pack. When they went to take some candy, the mom leaned the baby over the candy bowls that the boys were holding, and she stayed leaned over for a while as the baby (seriously, a tiny baby) tried and tried to grasp a piece of candy. That in itself wasn’t a problem. The disaster was the string of drool that dribbled from the baby’s mouth as he grabbed for a bit of loot. The drool trailed downward ONTO B’s CANDY!!! I could tell that B was immediately distressed, and I quickly distracted him from the disaster that had just occurred. He seemed to get over it pretty fast as the mom and baby went back down the stairs and I shut the door, so I thought all was well. I was wrong.

As the evening ran into night, and as it was getting close to our drop-dead bedtime for the twins (triplet A already having gone to bed…she was wiped out), I overheard the boys talking about the problem of the drool. A couple of minutes later, B came toward the kitchen sliding in front of him a “car” that he had made out of a good-sized box (big enough for him to sit in). On the floor of the “car” was the remainder of his candy, which was still a lot of loot. He said he was going to throw the whole thing into the kitchen garbage. When I asked why, he became agitated and yelled that it was because it was contaminated by baby spit.

Oh dear.

I stopped him from dumping the candy into the trash. It was too much candy for me to just let it all go to the county incinerator (although that probably would have been an okay thing…I just knew that B’s regret after the fact would come back to haunt me). So then I launched into my big lie.

The Lie

“You don’t have to throw it away. I can clean it with my baby drool cleaner ray gun.”

B stared at me. “You have one??” (As if he’d ever heard of one before. Even I had never heard of one before.) “Yes,” I lied. “Let’s go get it.”

I led B up to Ryan’s and my bedroom. I stepped into the closet and climbed up a rung on the step stool that’s always in there, quickly scanning for ANYTHING that B might buy as being a ray gun. A RAY GUN! A hairdryer was out of the question. Duh. I was kind of embarrassed for myself for having even considered it for a flash of a second. Then I spotted my electric back massager. No go. He’s seen that one in action. But then through the translucent front of a plastic drawer unit up on the closet shelf, I saw the box for a staple gun. I was pretty sure he’d never seen a staple gun before. It might work!

I pulled the staple gun box out of the plastic drawer, opened the end of the box, slid the styrofoam packaging out from the cardboard sleeve, and ceremoniously pulled out the gleaming silver staple gun. “Look,” I said. “It even says ‘heavy duty’ on it!” (A sticker on the side of the staple gun says, “HEAVY DUTY.”) He looked up at me with solemn, hopeful eyes.

We carried the staple gun downstairs to where the “car” full of candy was sitting on the floor. I said, “STAND BACK!!” B stepped behind me. I made a quiet, improvised “ray gun” noise as I passed the poser back and forth over the candy, being sure to ray gun all of it. “All done! It’s all clean now!” I said. B stepped out from behind me.

“Were you making that noise?” he asked.

“No,” I lied. He looked at me. I struggled to maintain my deadpan face.

“Is it magic?” he asked.

“No, it’s physics.” An even bigger lie.

“Why couldn’t I see it? Is it invisible?”

“Yes, it’s invisible…it’s infrared.” I couldn’t believe the stuff that was coming out of my brain and out of my mouth. It was all I could do to keep myself from bursting out laughing.

“You’d better do it again,” he said. “Nope,” I said, stifling my giggles. “That would be like baking it twice. You don’t want to burn it, do you?”

“No.” he said. Long pause, as he thought about it, then looking up at me with big eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be like toasting toast twice. Not a good idea.”

“Okay,” he said. And that was basically the end of it.

I told B that we’d better let his candy sit overnight to let the after-effects of the ray gun wear off. He bought it. I’m pretty sure that any residual drool that he imagines is still on the candy will be dry by morning. At least I hope so.

Is it wrong of me to set up my kid to eat candy wrapped in wrappers that could potentially have been contaminated by actual baby drool? I’m not sure. But what I do know is that I saved his candy from going into the trash—at least for the night—and that the big Halloween lie is going to go down in my mom history as a biggie. I hope he forgets all about it so that I don’t have to account for myself at some point in the future. But I kind of expect to be confronted over it at some family event down the road. If so, I might have to lie again, at least until B is old enough to know better. So in, like, a decade or so, if all goes well, I’ll let him in on the secrets of the ray gun. I’m not sure I can pull off another whopper any time soon.

Before I went to bed, I put the staple gun back into its box and pushed it WAY back on the shelf in the closet, where (I hope) it will remain out of sight, even if it’s not quite out of mind. My only fear is that he’ll tell the story to someone at school who will know better and who will set things straight. Like a teacher. Or the principal. Wish me luck!

(Update: It’s later in the morning and the kids are awake. B is blissfully chowing down on some of the formerly-contaminated candy. It’s looking promising so far… 🙂 )