"Psychological Thrillers" Are Now Banned from Our House, or My Kids Are Messing with My Mind Again

HELP! HELP ME! HELP!!!

That is not the scream to which a mother wishes to be awoken.

And yet I was.

At 2:00 am.

In a hotel room in Chicago.

HELP ME!! PHOENIX! HELP!

The child was begging for help from his oldest brother, since that is who he fell asleep next to a mere 2 hours before.

Of course, the older brother didn't wake up. His ears aren't programmed to alert the brain when little boys scream in the middle of the night.

Mine are.

I catapulted myself out of bed and over to theirs.

HELP! HELP ME! HEEEEEELP!

In the pitch-black dark, I searched for my boy.

WHERE ARE YOU?? 

I searched the floor. I searched the bed. He was nowhere, and yet he had to be. I could hear him.

I'M RIGHT HERE!! HELP ME!!

I got down on my hands and knees, frantically patting the floor. 

No boy.

I reached up onto the bed, searching through the blankets.

No boy.

But he had to be there. I could hear him, and he was so close!!

HELP ME! MOM! HELP!

Finally, my hand found something round.

IS THAT YOU??

I quickly ran my hand over the round thing I had touched. It might be...seems to be his head...where's the rest of him???

MOM! HELP!

I groped in the dark and felt something that could have been part of his arm.

Yes! It was him!

My dear little 7 year old had managed to wiggle his way under the blankets all the way to the foot of the bed. He had actually rolled off the end of the bed, but the sheets, so tightly tucked by housekeeping, had caught him. And there he woke, trapped in an unknown, cramped, dark, scary place.

I yanked the blankets off of Phoenix and pulled Turken out. Once free, he simply crawled back to his pillow and promptly fell back to sleep.

I, hopped up on adrenaline, didn't fall back to sleep for another hour.

Of course.

In the morning, I asked the three kids in the hotel with me what they remembered of the middle of the night excitement.

Buttercup: "What are you talking about?"
Phoenix: "Yeah. No. Pretty sure that didn't happen."
Even Turken, the boy whom I had rescued: "Huh? I did what?"
Phoenix: "Mom, you had a dream. None of it happened."
Buttercup: "Ha! You dreamed the entire thing!"
Me: NO! This was no dream!
All three kids: Hahahaha!!! Wait til Dad hears about THIS one!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. My kids are conspiring to make me look like I'm losing my mind. I don't know what their end game is, but I know there is one. And if I don't step up my own game, perhaps get a dashcam-type thing-a-ma-jig to record my entire life, I don't see this ending well for me.

I swear to you, it happened.

There was no dream.

The kids were so exhausted from the long day of volleyball that they didn't wake up.

I. Saved. Turken.

But I don't have to convince you.

You, my faithful readers, believe me.

Right?