Does my baby see through walls? Cool.

Desperate for spring air, we opened the window in our bedroom the other night, despite the calls for the Storm of the Century of the Week to come through town and kill us all again. I fell asleep quite happily with lungs filled with fresh air and awoke to the sound of the rain — a gentle rain pitter-pattering on the awning above our window. The only number my horrible eyesight could make out on the clock was 4, but I didn’t need the clock, it just felt unnecessarily early. I’d been awake for almost five minutes when the first noises came filtering in from our boys’ room.

It was a whiny-moan, and I could tell it was Tiny Bits, our 18-month-old. He’s woken me up in the middle of the night enough times for me to recognize his cry anywhere. It wasn’t a nightmare-induced scream, but the moan of a little boy only half awake and (hopefully) about to go back to sleep. I lay in bed, waiting for a full-throated bellow to come, but he stayed silent. I tried to go back to sleep, the gentle rain my soundtrack.

A sudden intensification of the storm got my eyes opened once more, and Tiny Bits started whining again. I waited, seeing if he would calm himself down, but this one sounded real. I slipped my glasses on and started to get up. Suddenly the sounds from the Bits’ room ceased. The storm had also settled down and everything seemed right with the world again. I went to put my glasses back on the nightstand and try to get back to sleep, but the moment my glasses hit the table, there came another half-hearted moan from the other room.

Figuring, surely, he has got to be up now, I slipped my glasses back on and started to get out of bed. But, once again, there was silence. Not wanting to risk actually waking a 75 percent sleeping baby, I lay back down and took my glasses off again. And as soon as my glasses hit the wood of the table, there was a cry from the other room. Glasses on, no crying. Glasses off, weak moaning and crying.

Surely he couldn’t hear my glasses hitting the wood when I laid them down; I couldn’t hear them. Just to be sure, I laid them down on a paperback book; instant moaning-whining. Was I on Candid Camera or what? He either had me on closed circuit TV or he could see through walls. OH MY GOODNESS, HE CAN SEE THROUGH WALLS! This is awesome, my son is a mutant from The X-Men! I am the coolest geek dad in the world.

I tried an experiment: I lay down with my glasses on and tried to think of who would play me in the movie Tiny Bits: The Real Weapon X. Sure enough, not another peep was heard that night.  I just slept with my glasses on.

The next morning, everything seemed normal: Tiny Bits couldn’t see through walls (nor did he seem to have extra acute hearing — he went on ignoring me just as well as he always does), I couldn’t find a hidden camera in my room, and Allen Funt didn’t jump out of my bathroom and say “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” “The Great Baby Sleeping Weirdness” would have to go down in history with all the great unsolved mysteries: The Bermuda Triangle, Loch Ness and how anyone makes it through middle school alive.

We could solve them, but do we really want to? Somethings humans just aren’t ready to know yet.

Originally published on stltoday.com