It started so innocently. My son and daughter had started this moving business – “Max Moving Men”, freely translated – and all I needed to do was lie on the bed while they would move our pillows and blankets from the bed to their storage.

My son took one end of the pillow, and my daughter the other as they carried everything to .. I don’t know where.

While I was lying there, they got tired of me and threw everything on top of me again. And then I moved my arm, and I heard how they ran away, screaming “monster!”

That sounded great so I got into it. They came back, I made a move, they ran away.

Then the pauses started to get longer. I heard them running towards the bedroom, and away from the bedroom, but not really into the bedroom. I thought they were just getting ready to meet the monster.

So I did the grown-up cheating thing: I looked. I peaked through a hole in my mountain of blankets and pillows, and I saw my son running past the bedroom, with a plastic helmet and a sword in his hand.

Just as I thought. They were preparing themselves for meeting the Monster.

I pulled the cover over me again and waited. I made a little breathing hole to myself, and waited. I heard the tapping of the tiny feet outside the bedroom, and laughed a little. Were they in for a surprise! This was a monster like none they’d ever seen!

And then the tapping stopped. I heard voices from far away, muffled voices, so I figured they were hiding. So I decided to wait them out and hide longer.

Ten minutes later, my wife came to tell me that she was going to the gym.

“What about the kids? What are they doing?” I said through my breathing hole.

“They’re reading in their little home in the bathroom,” she said.

“Oh.”