I didn’t light the candles. John wasn’t home. Eight year old Anna wouldn’t have done it because I told her not to and I knew the hamster didn’t do it because he didn’t have opposable thumbs!
I asked Anna, knowing this was a waste of time because she was perfectly beautiful, perfectly wonderful, perfectly obedient, perfectly wise, perfectly powerful, perfectly centered, perfectly smart, perfectly… well, you get the picture.
Anna said, “No, Mom. I didn’t light the candles.”
When John came home I explained this wonderfully strange MYSTERY! He listened quietly, no words just like a guy, then turned directly to Anna saying, “Did your evil twin do this?” to which Anna happily said,”Yes!”
Sometimes kids lie to protect their moms.

I broadened this Anna story into a children’s book called Bearos, now available free at amazon as an eBook.
One of my favorite pages says, “Mother got mad because she found mud inside the watermelon.” This was another Anna trick: eat the sweet center of a cut melon, into a cavernous hole, with DIRTY FINGERS!  nancymauerman.com

From the book Bearos