The Dangerous Quest for Bedtime

There's a Far Side cartoon that shows a boy trapped inside a wasp's nest being shaken down for all his lollipops or similar. It's a pointless drawing, but very amusing because the title is "It was Late and I Was Tired."

That same attitude--- the willingness to delve into absurdity due to sleep deprivation---was what urged me to go along with Ezra's game last night. He and Isis are in pjs, Isis waiting patiently on her bed with twenty-five more books than I asked her to pick out, and it's an hour past their bedtime. The weight of the Dreaded Monday Morning is crushing me at the base of my shoulders, and the knowledge that I need to call my husband before he goes to bed is making me irritable.  

Ezra decides that I will not be putting them to bed in a timely manner. He blocks me at the doorway, doing a lunatic dance. "Mom," he says. "Mom." He repeats this five times, very excited. "You have to guess the riddle. And if you get it, you can take a step forward."

I try to brush past him, making a bee-line for the bed so I can start the storytelling.

"NO!" he dances in front of me and politely but firmly shoves me back out of the doorway. "Mom. Mom. Mom. You have to guess. It's a riddle. It's a secret."

"Okay," I agree. In the manner of the best epic tales, clearly the hero must outwit the clever beast to reach the end of her quest: the bedtime story and lights out.

"So. How do you... howwwwwwww...." Ezra is clearly making this up as he goes along, but he's still wiggling around in his spot. "Okay. You're in a cave. There are no entrances and no exits. There are no holes in the floor. You have now way to get out. How do you get out?"

"I find the river or stream inside the cave and I swim up it until I can get out."

"No, there is no river in it."

"Yes there is. How do you think caves are made? The water hollows them out."

"No, sometimes the wind does. But you're wrong. There's no river in this one."

"Okay..." I'm beginning to wonder if I've missed something. "I climb through a hole you didn't know about up at the top."

"Noooooo, there ARE no holes. But you do have a mirror and a rope."

"I give up, Ezra. How do I get out?"

"Okay." More hopping and dancing, but he's clearly already formulated the answer. "You take the mirror, you shine it on the wall until you bright up a spot, then you loop the rope in two and place it on the shine and a doorway opens!" This illustrated with elaborate operatic gestures. It actually makes pretty good sense the way he describes it.  "So you can't move yet."

"Gimme another one," I tell him. Isis is meanwhile shouting her suggestions for getting out of the cave, a minute too late.

"How do you... how do you... Mom. Okay. Mom. How do you--- if you have a book, and there's a dragon in it, how do you get the dragon out with just an ORDINARY stick and a drop of water?"

This time I'm ready for it. "You put the water on the page and it opens a door and then the dragon can crawl out onto the stick."

Ezra looks at me suspiciously, as if he can't believe that I didn't guess the correct answer right away. "No, Mom," he explains, patient but clearly disappointed that I didn't see the obvious. "By magic."