Lost and Found

As I was walking home Friday evening, a missing pet sign caught my eye. Someone's beloved family iguana had escaped. The sign described the iguana, so that no one would confuse it with any other iguana you might stumble across on the sidewalks of West Philadelphia, and added that "our kids really love" the iguana. Perhaps the kids had interpreted that saying "if you love someone, set it free" a little too loosely.

My cousin's twin sons, who are about 6 years old, have always conspired in one way or another. This time, it involved a decorative crystal bowl that my cousin received as a wedding present. The bowl had survived 6 years of twin boys, but then it's number was up. Tempting fate, my cousin and his wife had recklessly displayed the dazzling bowl on a living room table. Of course, it disappeared. Everyone assumed that it had been broken, secretly swept up, and quietly thrown away. Still, my cousin's wife kept looking for it. It had survived so long against the odds, there was still hope. A couple of weeks after the crystal bowl vanished, one of the twins woke my cousin and his wife in the night. "We have to go outside." he said. They couldn't get him to explain any further, but the child must have insisted urgently, because my cousin and his wife took their son out to the yard. There the boy showed them where he and his brother had buried the crystal bowl, and they unearthed it in tact. My cousin asked why the twins had buried the bowl. The boy replied, "It was a weapon of mass destruction."