That's no moon...

The artifact lay flat on the table between my Aunt Shelia and me. I had found it about an hour ago in my grandmother’s linen closet. It was pointing toward me like I had just won a round of spin the bottle; I was it – and I was in trouble.

We had just moved in with my grandparents again. This was the second of three ‘move-back-ins’ my mother, sister, and I would have with my grandparents. I was older this time, maybe twelve or thirteen, and my aunt Shelia was probably sixteen going on seventeen. My mom would be home soon – and so would my grandparents.

You shouldn’t have touched IT – she’s going to kill you.

I loved snooping around my grandparents’ stuff. Theirs was the only home I’d ever known, so I didn’t think I was being too troublesome by peeking into their closets and dressers. Over the months we lived there before, I’d found World War II memorabilia, coin collections, and even an old 45 of my grandfather’s needle scratchy voice recorded as a final goodbye before he and the other GIs shipped off from California to the Pacific theatre – I guess there were recording booths set up on bases in L.A. and San Francisco for these grim souvenirs.

After all of that snooping, I’d only gotten in trouble once before. I found a small cup with some silver quarters in it – I didn’t think anyone would miss them and I only took a few. I knew of a pinball machine nearby that could help pass a long-summer weekend. I turned out they were made of silver – and they were my mom’s. She never let me forget.

This time seemed different. My aunt Shelia had been a witness to my discovery and she was looking for revenge. I had ratted her not two weeks ago when her boyfriend Mike had spent the night. Mike was an ok guy, but he had a tendency to just ‘poof in’ – like an uninvited magician – at the most inopportune moments, especially when I forgot to lock the bathroom door.

I wanted to put the artifact back – I wasn’t even looking for it. I had been looking for a clean beach towel in the linen closet when I uncovered it. It was ivory colored. It may have been a lighter shade at one point, but it was yellowing with age. I seem to recall a hairline crack – or maybe a hair down one side. Overall, the artifact seemed boring. I thought it was a travel tooth-brush holder.

Wait until your grandmother gets home – she is going to KILL you!

No sooner had the words left her lips than we heard my grandparents’ keys rattling in the now opening kitchen door. A moment later, my grandparents, my aunt and I were in an anxious tableau – at once frozen between anger and an intense collective eagerness to ignore what was happening – and what was pointing directly at my grandmother like a big finger in the middle of her kitchen table. My grandmother’s face dropped in horror.

Then, out of nowhere,

Mike poofed in from the hallway and blurted out with a chuckle:

WHOA! Whose vibrator is that?!?

In an instant, my grandmother disappeared behind a sprinkle of ninja dust, snatched her vibrator from the table, and ran into her bedroom.

IT’S NOT A VIBRATOR! She screamed from behind the slamming door.

Mike and my aunt Shelia were too scared to laugh. I was mortified. I knew that my snooping had led to a terrible situation.

What’s a vibrator?

I asked, as my mother walked into the kitchen.