Campus Sex and Tom Wolfe's Clothing

One of the odd things about sleeping in a house with small children is that you never know whom you might wake up next to: This morning it's Dixie. She has a new trick. Every third night or so, between midnight and 2, she wanders through the pitch black until she arrives at my side of the bed. She heaves first her special pillow and then her little body on top of me, en route to her mother's side. At 6, she bolts upright, fully rested, and begins to prod. She can be ignored. If we act as a unit and hide beneath our pillows, we can buy ourselves as much as 15 minutes more nighttime. But this morning the worst happens: Tabitha breaks ranks. From beneath my pillow I hear her muffled voice: "Dixie, did you take my keys?"

Her keys. She went to bed not knowing where they were. An alarming pattern has emerged: Mama's keys go missing, 2-year-old child is fingered as the prime suspect, and a ridiculous search of many improbable places ensues. An hour later, the keys turn up beneath the mountains of papers on Mama's desk or in one of the 600 caverns in Mama's Mordor-like purse.

"Put your pillow over your head." I groan. "It's our only hope." I burrow more deeply backward into the night.

"Dixie!"

"Hi Mama!"

"Did you take my keys?"

No answer.

"Dixie, you took my keys, didn't you?"

Long pause.

"Yes."

I poke my mouth -- and just my mouth -- out from under the pillow. I am no longer human; I am tortoise.

"There's no point in interrogating a 2-year-old," I say. "She's completely unreliable, she'll say yes to anything."

Mouth retracts as quickly as it emerged. Day is postponed; night returns.

"Dixie, where did you put my keys?"

No answer.

"Dixie, tell me where you put my keys."

No answer.

"Dixie, where are Mama's keys?"

Long pause.

"In the door."

Outraged, I rise up and announce that I will find the keys. The keys have me feeling like the competent member of this household.

"You can't go blame Dixie every time you lose your keys," I say, and off I go. I check everywhere -- desk, purse, counter -- and find nothing. I slink upstairs, offer up a poor excuse of an apology, then drag Dixie out the door to preschool. At noon comes the message on my voice mail: "Hi honey. I found my keys. They were in the garbage can. So whose fingerprints are on that? Not mine!"