Where did the chopstick go?

When I turned on the older touchscreen yesterday, the calibration seemed to have fixed itself by some mysterious means. You could touch the letters in the center of each colored square, and it would register. So I left the chopstick in Bow's possession and went to work on the computer in the adjoining pen. I hadn't looked away for more than five minutes, and the next time I looked, there was no chopstick. I went back in with Bow and, after searching visually throughout the pen, I asked him: "Where's the chopstick?"

" ש-ם" he spelled. That means "there".


"Where?" I asked. He gestured vaguely at one of the doors to the pen. I went all around the outer perimeter of Bow's pen, to see if he had placed the chopstick outside the pen by passing it through the openings in the grid. There was no chopstick.

For a short while, I actually believed he had swallowed it. But when a whole day passed and it did not appear in his stool, I came to the conclusion that this theory was unlikely to be correct.

This morning, when I turned on the computer, Bow gesticulated toward it, as if asking to use it. "But where's the chopstick?" I asked.

"Mommy remembers so much," he spelled.

"What did you do with it, Bow? Did you eat it?"

"No."

"Well, then where is the chopstick?"

He spelled: "It fell in the hole."

At this point I tend to believe him. He must have dropped it down the drain at the center of the pen.