Hovering directly over the steaming anomaly and feeling jittery and shameful as hell, I knew I'd likely never solve the stinking riddle. I also knew I had no other alternative but to wake someone to assist, as I was too little to negotiate changing the sheets and disposing of the repellent interloper. I went with the least sadistic sibling, Lisa.

"There's poo in the bed," I whispered, shaking her shoulder in the dark. Looking confused and irritated, she ushered me back to mom's room. Miraculously, Lisa didn't linger around reacting to the turd; instead, she just sprung into silent, efficient action. Assuming I did it, I guess, she drew a bath and stuck me in it while she put flowered sheets where solid blue ones had been. I didn't see exactly what she did with the ca-ca. Now I wish I had; it might have provided more closure.

Lisa helped me into some fresh jammies and tucked me into clean sheets, working like a world-weary nurse hurrying to finish the night shift. I passed out straightaway, exhausted from the stressful odyssey and tranquilized by the warm bath. When I came to the next morning, my parakeet was chirping in the next room and Mom was laying in bed reading, taking no notice of the new sheets. Lisa came in and turned on the TV, acting like nothing had happened. She didn't even look at me askance. I pretended like nothing had happened too, wanting more than anything to keep it from my mom, just in case it was actually me who'd given birth to the dung. I couldn't risk the possible humiliation -- nor could I risk potential banishment fromthe big bed. In this zone of silence, I couldn't begin investigative questioning. I would never get to the bottom of the origins of the puzzling poo; I had to just flush it out of my head and move on, closure or no closure, vindication or no vindication.

Fast-forward 22 years: It's 1995 and I'm on the phone, for some reason relating the story to my sister-in-law, the one married to Don, who's now a prominent businessperson in Boca Raton, Fla. "You know what?" I told her, "I think that's why I've been constipated all these years. Having that mystery turd invade my space like that made me clamp down, I guess. Made my mind go and ruin my digestive tract. Haven't been the same since." She commiserated with me through little bursts of laughter.

Five minutes after we hung up, though, the phone rang. It was Don's wife again, now all agog.

"OK, OK, listen -- I think I have your answer!" she warbled, sounding as if she had insects in her pants. "Don did it! Don just admitted to it!"

I almost dropped the phone, so intense was the sensation of two decades of tension and uncertainty peeling away and falling to the floor. Tightened intestinal walls, clenched for more than two decades, began to relax, to finally feel the flow of oxygen and blood that had been trying to reach them all along.

But then, just as suddenly, disgust replaced relief. Mixed feelings swirled like violent trade winds inside me. I almost dropped the phone -- again. Christ in a sidecar, I'm related to someone who would crap by my head then not tell me for 22 years -- and now this guy has two kids and runs a company that's on the New York Stock Exchange? Ugh, I want off the planet.

Then there was a ruckus on the other end and Don grabbed the receiver. "I was just kidding!" he laugh-spat. "I didn't do it! I don't know who did. I didn't even know it happened." I could hear his wife in the background whooping and giggling and admonishing him. It was a gleeful jamboree for them. For me it was an emotional roller-coaster ride, first through Nirvana, then through Hades, then returning to the unfortunate status quo: The clench-down was on again.

I suppose I will never be privy to who produced the mystery doo next to my innocent little head that night. Oh sure, I'd pay good money to get a little scraping of it and do some DNA testing so I could put the whole thing to rest and finally be at peace. But that's a moot point, now, isn't it? That poo is long gone, probably floating in the Atlantic Ocean, continuing its mission by scaring little kids on rafts.

Perhaps my best hope is that one of my immediate kin, purging decades worth of tremendous guilt, will gush forth with the information when I'm on my deathbed -- or they're on theirs. Given the improbability of that, I also hold out hope that once I've passed on, some sort of otherworldly being will greet me at the gates and produce the information before putting me through orientation. "Paul did it," they'll tell me in a sing-song voice, while harps play and cherubs titter. Or, "It was Marcia... la la la."

Then, finally, I will be whole. Too bad I will have no actual bowels to benefit from it.