Overheard, from the bathroom: a peremptory voice declaring, “Hey! I’m in there!”
Inge had perceived an imaginary assailant outside the door, and in truth her fancy was not too farfetched, for within seconds there was a very real Lewis without. Lewis, like most children, has a radar device whose sole purpose is to detect the shutting of the bathroom door. Someday I’m going to run an experiment to support and quantify this hypothesis, but in the meantime I’m satisfied with the level of proof I’ve got: My children, at least, can and do know about every single trip I take, within no more than fifteen seconds and often less. Furthermore, they save all their requests until such time as they can convey them through the bathroom door–if, I mean, the door is locked, as it happily sometimes is.