The Amalgamated Ash Heap of Apathy



I learned tonight that my kids are not human.

You’d think: human mother + human father = human kids. You’d be wrong, because they are pigs.

I found this out when I cleaned their rooms. That part was strategic, you see. The kids were away, staying at my mom’s for a week, which they do every summer. I scheduled a carpet cleaning service. Then I went to clear everything off the bedroom carpets.

Seriously, kid? And you wondered why those ants suddenly appeared?

I could write an entire Shel Silverstein-esque poem detailing the mounds of debris I found lurking under their beds, loitering behind bookshelves, and littering the corners of their closets.

Detritus scattered wall to wall,
Lego pieces, rubber balls,
Bits of popcorn, water cups,
Snack bowls (some still half filled up),
Candy wrappers, burst balloons,
Lite Brite pegs and plastic spoons,
Marbles, Shopkins (lots of those),
Random beads and dirty clothes,
Lollipops (well, just the sticks),
Stethoscopes from doctor kits,
Play-Doh and kinetic sand.
When did this get so out of hand?
LOL Doll accessories,
Hunted for on hands and knees,
Stubbed my toes on Barbie shoes,
That’s why this mom has the blues.

I ruthlessly stuffed garbage bags with scribbled-on scraps, Happy Meal toys, unidentifiable pieces of plastic, Solo cups, empty Ziploc bags, random papers from school, eraserless pencil stubs, cheap claw-machine animals, and old valentines. (Valentines are pretty much form letters nowadays, since kids have to write one for each classmate. Way to ruin a perfectly good Hallmark holiday, schools.) I saved every goddamn Lego, because my girls are obsessed with them.

One of several (I lost count) bags of junk I hauled out.

My husband sat on the rug with me and helped sort thousands of tiny objects into piles (categorized as follows: "garbage," "Lego," "return this game piece to its box," and "what in the hell is this thing"). He was the one who came up with the title for this blog.

Maybe one day my kids will read this and exclaim, “Mom! You threw away MY stuff?!”

To that, I say: all’s fair. One day, when I’m dead, they’ll have to sort through and throw away heaps of my crap. It’s the great circle of life and stuff. Literally: life, and stuff. I’ll do my best to leave as little junk as possible for them to sort through. On the other hand, I may become a pack rat, as payback for tonight’s excavation of the landfills they’ve been sleeping in.

I got 10,415 steps in today, just from walking the dog and mucking out the pig pens that were my children’s bedrooms. The outdoor garbage can is full, and garbage day is still five days away.

Clearly I will have to be more specific, and conduct more thorough inspections, when I ask my darling children to clean their rooms in the future.

Until then, I have four more days to enjoy my clean bedrooms before my sweet little angels of chaos come home.




Comments

  1. AshaJune 20, 2019 at 7:08 AM

    I just did this with my near-adult children last weekend. Except I'm much more cruel than you are, and hovered like the Angel of Death around them as they cleared the debris from their rooms, occasionally yelling commands and threats.

    You did a really nice job of taking us through the frustrations of having young people with questionable hygiene standards living with you. You could easily have descended into bitterness or anger, but you didn't. Using hyperbole, and that fun and funny homage to Shel Silverstein, worked well to amplify the absurd and highlight that your complaints were less than half serious.

    At just the point where you ran the risk of labouring the point, you switched the focus and invited the reader to project ahead in time to when your kids would have to wade through all of your collected stuff. Emphasising "life and stuff" was a good way to insert a pause, to give the reader a moment to consider how we all accumulate tchotchkes and knick-knacks and bric-a-brac over a lifetime. It would have been cool to see how this essay would have read if you'd ended here.

    Though the last three paragraphs maintained the same humour and pace that you'd established earlier, they felt a little forced. Ending on the reflection of our emotional connection to objects would have been cleaner, I feel. Introducing the distance travelled (steps), the plans for how you'll approach cleaning in the future, and plans to enjoy your last few days of cleanliness gave the reader new topics to consider. It felt almost like restarting the essay; like getting to the bottom of the hill (your narrative arc), and then starting the climb up the next hill.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JenJune 20, 2019 at 3:23 PM

      Thanks! You're right, it would have much more of a "punch line" effect if I ended it after that paragraph about "life and stuff".

      Delete
  2. KB BaltzJune 20, 2019 at 9:20 AM

    Bwhaha. I don't feel qualified for CC on this one since I have no children, but this did give me flash backs about how my dad dealt with this situation. He just piled everything I owned into black trash bags and took it to the dump. Your way is better, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag is no way to live.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JenJune 20, 2019 at 3:23 PM

      Wow! Your dad was really cutthroat! My kids should thank their lucky stars :)

      Delete
  3. Shailaja VJune 20, 2019 at 5:49 PM

    Oh man, as a mom to a teen, this is so relatable. Love the Shel Silverstein poem too bits. Even the Lego bits. :)

    ReplyDelete

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