Yesterday, under the weight of much duress, Lydia was cleaning up her bedroom while Helena and I were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and chatting. After she’d been in there for some time, we heard a plaintive call from her direction — “Mom, come …” — then, close on its heels, a more urgent, “Mom, can you come please!”

There was a certain note in her voice that made me jump up and hurry to her room, fearing all manner of pre-teen disasters. When I got there, she was sitting on her bed, backed into the corner and pointing. “There’s an orm in here,” she wailed.

Now, orm is the Swedish word for “snake”; apparently it was the word that sprang to her mind instead of “worm.” Turns out it was a little bug, rather than a worm or a snake, but that’s neither here nor there, because what I heard her say was. “There’s a mormon here.”

And in the split-second before my brain caught up to my ears, I actually looked around worriedly and thought, “How did a mormon get in here?!”