Trenton’s right—I should have written this down sooner. Some of the details are becoming vague, but I’m going to do what I can. The thing is, living with the twins makes stories like these seem almost commonplace. Nonetheless, this one definitely deserves capture, if for nothing other than blackmail purposes…

It must have sat by the front door for hours before anybody discovered it. This was just after that snowfall, and I didn’t notice it right away: a wadded-up bath towel on the floor next to the front door, scattered amongst a carnage of boots, gloves, and crumpled hats. I poked it with my foot, which thankfully was safe inside my shoe. It was rolled up kind of like a Hershey’s kiss and at first I thought maybe there was mud inside. And then the smell hit me. “Is that poop?” I yelled. “Did somebody put poop in a bath towel and leave it by the front door?” The twins both looked up at me, wide-eyed and innocent, seemingly ignorant of the small pile of shit by the front door. Simultaneously, they both intoned the mantra to which I’ve become immune: “It wasn’t me!”

I stood there for a few moments, trying to wrap my head around the situation. Maybe it was cat poop? Maybe someone used a towel to dry their boots, a cat took a shit in the towel, and then one of the twins was considerate enough to bundle up the mess for easy disposal. I knew in my heart it wasn’t true, though, and the look on Natalie’s face confirmed my hunch. Nick’s cool logic and frank honesty quickly relieved him of suspicion: “I saw that earlier, but I thought it was mud. That’s gross.”

Amen, little buddy.

Natalie started to panic. She’s normally an exceptional liar, but the magnitude and the absurdity of the situation she’d gotten herself into was weighing heavily, and she was off her game. She started to scream. “It WASN’T me!!!”

It’s easy to get angry at the everyday kind of things. You’re being too loud, stop running in the house, stop making that horribly annoying sound, don’t hit your sister, pick up your animals, etc. But sometimes—and I truly think these are the moments upon which parenthood hinges—sometimes the kid does something so awful, so unimaginably bizarre and unexpected, that you’re helpless to maintain composure. Good luck trying to discipline your child when you’re doubled over laughing, barely managing to catch your breath. Mom and I had tears streaming down our faces, shrieking laughter, alternately expressing our lack of ability to understand, and accusing each other of shitting in a bath towel and leaving it by the front door for the other to find.

Eventually I had to leave for work. I called Mom mid-day to see if she’d made any progress in nailing down a culprit. Everyone in the house knew Natalie had committed the unspeakable act, but until she admitted it, there wasn’t much we could do. Turns out, an interesting thing happened after Mom dropped the twins off at school. On their way up the stairs to the building, Natalie had slipped on the ice and fallen hard on her elbow—the same arm she’d broken and had casted a few weeks prior. Mom dropped off Nicky, and drove Natalie the few blocks back home to check her out and make sure everything was okay.

It turned out that she was fine, and as they were getting ready to leave again for school, Mom asked if Natalie wanted her to tell her fortune. The night before, Mom had made Natalie one of those pyramid-shaped paper fortune tellers—the kind you stick your fingers in and pinch and open a certain number of times, unfolding corners and revealing the future. The template for this particular one had come in a magazine—all the futures were pre-ordained and printed out already. Natalie picked her numbers and eventually arrived at her fortune corner. Mom unfolded it and had to try hard to keep from laughing.

“It’s always best to tell the truth.”

Natalie’s eyes grew wide and then she burst into sudden and frenzied tears. In between sobs, the truth came out. “I don’t know what happened! I waited too long and then it just happened and I wasn’t wearing underwear and I don’t know what happened!! Don’t tell Nicky or Katie!” Mom patted her back and gently explained the concept of the process of elimination—that we were all fairly certain we hadn’t taken a dump by the front door and bundled it into a towel, so were pretty sure it had been Natalie all along. She was mortified to have been outed by the fortune-teller and panicked that Nick would tell her friends at school. It’s a valid concern.

She begged us all to keep it a secret, but there are certain stories that can’t go untold. And when you make the choice to shit in a towel and leave it in the living room, you make certain concessions about privacy, I think.