i shouldn't have asked, although i'm glad i did

Tonight I read my girls "The Cat in the Hat" before bedtime. As you probably know, the Cat in the Hat and Things 1 and 2 make a huge mess of Sally and her brother's house while their mother is out. The Cat in the Hat manages to clean up the house before their mother comes home, and he leaves no trace that he was there. The book ends:

Then our mother came in
And she said to us two,
"Did you have any fun?
Tell me. What did you do?"

And Sally and I did not know
What to say.
Should we tell her
The things that went on there that day?

Should we tell her about it?
Now, what SHOULD we do?
Well...
What would YOU do
If your mother asked YOU?

Every time we read this story, my girls answer the same way. The wouldn't tell me what had happened.

But tonight my oldest said, "I would probably tell her that the tissue box fell into the toilet and we got it out, dried it off, and put it back on top of the toilet."

And since I wasn't fully paying attention to what they were saying (because they give me the same answer every time), it took me a minute to catch on.

So yes, the tissue box fell into the toilet, my girls wiped it off, and then returned it without telling anyone.

I guess this is why they recommend reading to your children for 20 minutes each day. Had I not read to them tonight, I would never have known.