Let's be reasonable about this...

Once upon a time I was talking to my sister on the phone about nothing in particular, when I could hear my 7 year old niece scream something in the background to which my sister replied, "No one is sneaking in and cutting your underwear..." My niece had been putting on her pajamas and found a pair of her underwear that the elastic had worn out of and naturally assumed someone had broken into their house and cut her underwear.

She sounded crazy until I really thought about it. It probably didn't happen but it's completely possible. I mean weirder things have happened, right? What I didn't know was apparently when children have major freak outs about little things like this, you should not reply with, "That isn't what happened in this instance but I mean, it could happen. Chances are it's never going to happen to you but it's not outside the realm of possibility that someone could break into your house and cut your underwear." And definitely don't bring up examples like, "I swear one time I read about this guy getting sick and they later discovered someone had been sneaking into his house at night and putting arsenic, it's a type of poison, in his orange juice. It was slowly killing him. I don't think he died though. It might not have even really happened...but it could have."

This is exactly how I managed to piss a lawyer off so bad during jury selection that I was cut in the first round. "If you were shown evidence during a trial of a shoe print, of the exact brand and size of shoe as the suspect, in the victims yard...blah blah blah...would you find the defendant guilty?" "........No?" "Why not?"  "Because anyone could wear that exact shoe and exact size..." "What if the suspect had mud on the bottom of their shoe?" "...no" "What if there was a witness?" "....still no.." "So if all the evidence in the world pointed to the suspect and there was a witness and it was caught on camera and you were also there yourself, you still wouldn't find them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?!"  To which I slammed my hand down, stood up and yelled, "NO! FOR I AM NOT A REASONABLE PERSON! THIS ENTIRE JUSTICE SYSTEM IS A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY TO DISTRACT US FROM THE TRUTH.  REPTILIAN HUMANOIDS ARE RUNNING THE WORLD AND VACCINATING US WITH MIND CONTROL SUBSTANCES."

At which point I was removed from the courtroom and taken to an undisclosed location for reprogramming by the evil lizard overlords. Which totally worked, I swear, I don't remember a thing. I'm especially not suspicious due to my always freezing cold extremities, constant urge to bask under heat lamps and inability to love.

So next time instead of lying to your child and telling them someone's not going to sneak into your house and cut their underwear, tell them the truth and also encourage them, "It doesn't look to me like someone snuck into our house and cut your underwear but that could happen, so always be alert. And with enough training from our reptilian overlords and you work really, really hard, you could be the person who sneaks in and cuts peoples underwear! Or even better, be the head of the reptilian humanoid breeding program! The possibilities are endless little one, I believe in you!"

man...I'm going to be the best fucking parent.