Late Night Snacks

Us kids never went hungry growing up.  Mom always had a home-cooked meal on the table every night & we ate as a family....all sitting around the same table....AT THE SAME TIME.  The meal may not always have been what we WANTED, but we had the option of 'doing without' until breakfast.  Seemed fair....but we'd usually end up eating whatever was in front of us....even while complaining. Still....

In spite of being well-fed, my older sister & I just couldn't seem to resist the urge to sneak food out of the kitchen, and into our bedroom to enjoy later.  This wasn't too difficult to accomplish, seeing as how my sister & I always had kitchen duty after a meal.  She washed; I dried.  (Mom never would let us switch off.  Something about my sister needing to keep washing 'till she learns how to do it right!' ) My sister was GREAT at creating a diversion while I carted our snack off to hide in the bedroom for later.  Some nights, SHE would smuggle in the goods, claiming she  'had to go to the bathroom'. ( Mom started to worry that perhaps she had a bladder disorder.)  Regardless of who did the 'deed', we'd meet back up at the kitchen sink to compare notes, then eagerly looked forward to bedtime.

Since there were three of us girls in the family, we all shared a room.  My "sister in crime" and I shared the same bed.  We spent many happy nights, snacking under the covers, with little sister (in the bed across the room) whining & threatening to call Mom if we didn't tell her what we were doing. (We've often questioned why we didn't just smother her in her bed when she was little!) Some nights, she'd raise such a ruckus that Mom had to come in to see what all the commotion was about, and threaten us with bodily harm if we didn't "settle down & go to sleep!!"

I'll never forget one night in particular.  My crime partner had smuggled an entire box of Cheerios into the bed.  She & I were happily munching away when we heard Mom coming!!! "Quick!! Hide the Cheerios!! Mom's coming!!!!!!!!"  Well, as fate would have it.....my sister couldn't get the box closed up fast enough, so had to shove it under the covers in it's wide open condition!  Mom burst into the room with an angry "What's going on in here??!" Of course, little sister tried to bust us out, but couldn't really, since even SHE didn't know what was going on.   By now, both my sister & I were having a difficult time breathing!  We nearly DIED when Mom said "What have you got under the covers??"  In unison, we both proclaimed "Nothing!!!"

Mom must've been in a good mood that night, or just wanted to hurry up & get back to whatever movie she & Dad were watching, cause for once.....Mom didn't come over and yank the covers off the bed to see for herself what we had under there!  Fortunately for us, Mom didn't see us profusely sweating bullets!!  It's a wonder she couldn't hear our hearts, palpitating, from across the room.  Through the sheer grace of God, neither my sister nor I died of stroke or heart attack that night. 

Mom finally left the room & closed the door.  Little sister was still grumbling in the corner about "next time!" In panicked anticipation of Mom throwing  back our bedcovers, my sister had deftly used her foot to shove the box of cereal to the foot of the bed.  In doing so, the entire contents of the box emptied itself onto the sheets!  Our bed was full of them!! We spent nearly an hour trying to get them all back into the box...then another hour or so wondering HOW to get the box back into the kitchen UNDETECTED.  Dad always liked cereal for breakfast and he and Mom were usually up before us kids were!

 Somewhere in the wee hours, we both finally fell into a fitful sleep of exhaustion and nerves.  I really don't remember how we finally solved our dilemma.  I DO remember, a couple of days later, Mom asking the two of us HOW she found Cheerios in our bed when she changed the sheets??  I guess we learned to lie, at an early age, as a survival skill!!

Later on, we had to come up with a creative explanation for yet another phenomenon Mom found when she changed our sheets.  We never took chocolate covered donuts to bed again.