Take My Brother!

Overheard this evening:

Zee, striding into the playroom, speaking in an impressively gravely monster voice:  "Who do I eat first?"
Em, immediately:  "Hebs!"

It reminds me of the way my mother tried to convince us to sleep next to the big, dark "crack". 

(To understand the situation, let me explain our sleeping arrangement:  We had a modified bunk bed, but instead of a single bed on the bottom, there was a double bed.  The top bunk wasn't tall enough to allow sleeping on the full double bed when it was pushed under, so to sleep on the bottom bunk, the bed had to be pulled out from under the top bunk, trundle-style.  Every night, the three of us older girls would fight over who had to sleep in the middle, next to the dark underside of the bunk.)

So my mother told us a story:  If the boogeyman came into our room at night, he would grab whichever girl was on the edges--so the middle spot was the safest spot of all!  The middle (and other edge) girl would hear the screams of the first girl, and we could get away!  (I'm not joking.  She really told us this.  And because we got different bunkbeds when I was in first grade, this means she told a pre-SIX-YEAR-OLD this.)

We didn't believe her.  Everyone knew that the boogeyman would come from under the bed, so of course he would grab the middle girl first.  Duh.