The Very Dirty Towel: A Mystery

Think your children are going quietly down to bed?

You are wrong.

They are quiet because they are doing something naughty.

The babies had been in bed for about 1 hour (and they went right down without a fuss, they were so good!) when I decided I should be a good wife and clean the kitchen before my wonderful amazing awesome perfect husband came home from work.  I turned off the computer, tired of processing photos anyway, and started making my way down the hall when I was suddenly confronted with something odd.  A towel.
Although a towel isn't peculiar in and of itself, it was a very dirty towel.  And since I don't generally leave very dirty towels laying around, this towel was something of an oddity.

I cautiously began to approach the dirty towel but had not managed very many steps before a second clue that all was not right this evening caught my attention.  I was momentarily relieved I noticed it when I did, for my big toe was hovering mere inches above this second surprise, which would have been a very unpleasant surprise had my descending foot completed its journey and arrived in something quite sticky and altogether unexpected.



Mildly alarmed I removed my favorite 2-jointed appendage from imminent danger and decided it was requisite to further explore these strange apparitions so that I might discover the mystery that kept me from my future sparkling kitchen.  Further inspection demanded a close encounter with the subject.  I mustered my faculties and began the long 5 foot 6 inch journey to the floor. No sooner had my knees touched the ground than all began to unravel and reveal, for the mysterious substance dolloped on the floor and smeared across a once clean towel had a most familiar and unmistakeable odor that reached up into my nose and triggered one epifamatic lightbulb, causing it to burst into life and recognize my now and eternal nemesis:

peanut. butter.

My mind, jumping to an immediate conclusion, sent a sudden burst of energy to my legs, causing my body to leap forward and dash down the hall, barely avoiding other dangerous dollops along the way.  I arrived in the kitchen breathless and -- dare I admit it?  -- fearful at what I would find.  But my worst fears were unmet as the kitchen stood empty.    Too empty.  For there, the counter where not one but two jars of peanut butter should be standing was the home of nothing more than a small smudgy finger print.  A chair, carefully pushed across the floor to the empty counter sported more fingerprints still.  I retreated to the hallway uncertain of my next move.  The kitchen and living room stood empty on this end of the hall, my bedroom where I had obliviously sat working mere minutes before also stood empty on the opposite end of the hall, and of the three remaining doors in the hallway between these two locations, only one door stood open.
My adrenaline spent on that first mad dash to the kitchen, I approached the black doorway slowly, breathing deeply, finally noticing  how the sweet and salty odor augmented the closer I crept to that fateful  third door.  I paused just outside the threshold, stealing myself for what I might find inside, then carefully inched around the corner and into the third bedroom.  My eyes took too long adjusting to the dimly lit room, illuminated only by the glowing abode of Hamm and Bublé, our pet goldfish.  My vision slowly cleared and there, crouching in the shadows of my 3-year-old's bed, my worst nightmare looked straight at me and grinned wickedly.  The peanut butter was consuming my daughter's soul.

In a whirlwind of panic I scooped up my precious daughter and carried her, peanut paste and all to the bathroom.  I switched the light on, grabbed a towel in a vain effort to combat my enemy when suddenly, with a more thorough inspection in better light, I realized it was in reality my daughter Juliet, who was consuming the peanut butter, and not (as my terror stricken heart had wrongly observed) the other way around.



This invoked an entirely different feeling in me.  Rest assured, I did not scream or yell or curse, or beat my fists upon the ground.  I confronted the situation calmly and rationally.  Like an executioner. Readying himself for the judicious slaying of a wrongful criminal.




I had already rinsed out a set of pajamas, started a bath, cleaned numerous spots of smudgied carpet when it occurred to me that I had only found one of the missing jars of peanut butter.
I turned the light on in the third bedroom, knowing it wouldn't disturb the sweet slumber of my beautiful perfect little baby Bensen.

Bensen.  THE ACCOMPLICE!



And thus the mystery of the very dirty towel was solved, although no one ever confessed, and no one seemed very penitent about it.