Our Stuber Ghost Story

As I did my very best angry toy store owner voice during my dramatic reading of Curious George and the Toy Store last night, there was a knock at the boys' closed bedroom door. Everyone stopped goofing and stopped exclaiming and stopped reading, and we flipped our collective heads that direction. In that moment before logic clicked in, between being engrossed in being the best story reader ever and realizing that it was impossible that someone was knocking at the boys' door, my mind rushed through a few haphazard thoughts. Thoughts such as, why would a stranger break into our house and then knock on the boys' door? How did the girls break out of their room? Why did the girls then stop to knock on the door? And then, "It's a ghost!" from Benjamin who turned to me wide-eyed and with a kind of electric excitement in his eyes a half-smile on his face. "I'll go see," commanded Nicholas who then got up and actually marched a little bit to the door, whipping it open. Nothing. Quiet. Nighttime. The let down. He turned, "Nobody's there," he shrugged his shoulders, closed the door, and hopped back in bed turning his whole attention back to the story. Ben had already started showing me how a hula hoop works. Our ghost encounter was over. No need to break the routine. Time for bed.