By Jon Show–Everyone in my house is hiding something.

Not like a secret. I’m certain they have some, but I honestly don’t care. People keep things secret for a reason and I’m not really at the stage in my life where I care to find out what theirs are.

I’m talking about physically hiding something.

Accusations of “eating my snacks” are a common refrain around here. Each of them perceives something as theirs, and when someone else eats it, their personal privacy has been violated, or something like that.

As it relates to the children, I believe my love of Halloween candy may be a catalyst for their perceived need to bury all their treasure.

When they were little, I would wait until the day after Halloween — which is a national holiday for home-office parents — and absolutely demolish their bags of candy to the tune of 15 to 20 pieces per day.

Wife shaming

I also blame the Mother of Dragons, who grew up in a house with so many people that I don’t think I’ve met them all.

When she was a kid, whenever there was ever a box of something good sitting in the pantry, someone devoured it immediately.

As such, she developed what the medical community refers to as a defense mechanism and, thus, has been hiding snacks and treats for years.

What kind of snacks and treats?

Blocks of dark chocolate with various flavorings like raspberry, salted caramel and whatever else they use to flavor fancy chocolate. Cadbury Mini Eggs. That’s all I’ve been able to uncover, but I’m sure there’s more.

She used to hide the blocks of chocolate on a high cabinet shelf, but the kids grew taller and eventually found them, so she’s moved them somewhere else that I can’t locate.

She also used to stash her snacks, but then she went gluten-free a couple of years ago. She claims it was for health reasons, but I firmly believe it was so she no longer had to hide her snacks.

Now she keeps them in a basket in plain view, but no one wants to eat anything in there because it all tastes like rice flour or macerated almonds.

Or it’s filled with protein snacks that middle-aged women have flocked to en- masse, like organic meat sticks — which are just glorified Slim Jims, a snack they would never eat.

On the occasion there’s something in there that tastes good and I eat any of it, I’m chastised for eating her snacks.

Get it, girl

The Blonde Bomber is the worst of all of them. No one else knows this, but she keeps a box of old Eggo waffles in the freezer that is filled with various frozen treats she doesn’t want anyone to find.

Yes, I just dimed her out. No one in my family reads this anyway, so it’s not like they’re going to find out here. (Sidebar: apparently her friends read this and told her because when it ran in print I received a very stern rebuke, after which I reminded her that her brother doesn’t read it so her secret is still safe).

There’s really no way to hide ice cream, so on the rare occasion I see some Jeni’s frozen lemon sorbet with blueberries, have a craving and eat a quarter cup of it, I’m excoriated after school the next day for eating her food.

Yes, the same child for whom I’ve been cooking between two and three meals a day for the last 14 years dresses me down for eating a small portion of her ice cream.

Last month she bought herself a 3-pound bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs, which I love. She poured them into a Tupperware container that she carried around the house under her arm like an elderly woman clutching her purse in a nursing home of ill repute.

The son also rises

Future Man, who occasionally gets paid by someone to do something, usually uses the money to buy gas for his car.

Wait, sorry, no he doesn’t. He uses it to buy desserts from the school lunch aisle at the grocery store. Things like Moon Pies and angel cakes and various other things considered delicacies in the ’80s, which he then stores in plain sight in his bedroom because no one wants to walk in there and be subjected to the smell of his room.

Keep in mind this is the same child from whom I only have to hide one thing: my underwear. Because when he goes too long without doing his laundry he goes looking for my skivvies to buy himself a few more days.

As a result, I now hide my underwear. But there are only so many places you can hide your underwear in your closet, so he eventually finds them, depletes my stock, and I end up having to wear a pair of ill-fitting boxer shorts from the Obama administration.

He stole my socks for a long time as well, but I figured out a solution to the problem. I bought the ugliest John Deere mid-calf socks they sell at Target because he wouldn’t be found dead wearing them in public.

Victory, Dad! I think? Just let me have this one.

Accepting some blame

Am I a participant in this Squirrel Game of hiding food? No. Do I hide things I don’t want them to eat? No, I do not. I just eat things I know they hate and I don’t have to bother with it.

As a result I find myself eating a lot of things with gluten. A lot of pistachios. I’d been on a hummus kick for years but had to give it up this winter when the Blonde Bomber decided she liked hummus and cleaned me out in a week.

Or I eat the packages of things that my kids request for lunches but then never finish, because we always buy too much of it at Costco and they get tired of eating it.

It took me all last summer to devour the remnants of a 10-pound box of Welch’s gummy treats and the remains of a 5-pound box of Toast-Chee crackers.

Before that it was mini Slim Jims, which I don’t even like, but someone had to eat them.

One afternoon my wife came home early from work to grab a snack on her way to the gym and saw me in the kitchen eating one.

She made a face and scoffed. “Ew, are you eating a Slim Jim?”

And then she reached up into her gluten free snack basket, grabbed a Chomps meat stick and walked out the door.

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Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 17-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 14-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog is actually named Lightning.