Riddle of the Day
Riddle of the Day
My eight-year-old son Tristan loved to make his mom think. Most mornings, when I got out of bed, a folded sheet of paper containing his latest riddle would be waiting for me on the kitchen table. I would have three tries to guess the answer, and when the three tries were up, Tristan would burst out of his hiding place, either giggling at having outwitted Mommy or vowing to make a harder one next time.
This morning was no exception. I rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. A folded piece of paper sat on the table, as usual.
I read the riddle out loud, per our custom.
“What has two legs in the morning, one in the afternoon, and four in the evening?”
I scrunched up my nose, trying to think. My sleep-addled brain wasn’t cooperating.
“This is a hard one,” I admitted. “Can I get a hint?”
I waited for my son to start laughing and say something silly, but he was unusually silent. I figured he was extra proud of this one and wanted Mommy to put in extra effort, too.
I squeezed my eyes together in concentration. Ugh, I needed coffee.
I threw out three unsuccessful guesses, answered only by impatient thumps on the wall from behind the pantry door. I sighed.
“Okay, that’s enough, young man. Come and help Mommy with breakfast,” I said. Of course, he wouldn’t actually be any help; his specialty lay in eating all the banana slices before they made their way onto the pancakes.
I frowned when I saw all the bananas were gone. The peels lay in a yellow heap at the bottom of the compost bin.
“Tristan, get out here, please.”
The pantry door squeaked on its hinges. No doubt he’d have some wildly implausible excuse: a family of orangutans came to visit, eating enough bananas makes you invisible…
It was just then that I noticed the slip of notepaper lying on the floor under the kitchen table. It must have fallen out of the folded sheet containing today’s riddle. What was this, a hint?
I bent down to retrieve it and squinted at the unfamiliar, spidery handwriting.
Answer: a stranger who comes to your house, hides under your bed, and takes your little boy away.
Just as I began to scream, a man lunged at me from behind the counter.## TLDR Summary:
Most mornings, when I got out of bed, a folded sheet of paper containing his latest riddle would be waiting for me on the kitchen table. I threw out three unsuccessful guesses, answered only by impatient thumps on the wall from behind the pantry door. “What has two legs in the morning, one in the afternoon, and four in the evening?”
I scrunched up my nose, trying to think. Of course, he wouldn’t actually be any help; his specialty lay in eating all the banana slices before they made their way onto the pancakes. “Can I get a hint?”