A few summers ago, Shelby went swimming with some friends. As per her normal routine, she dumped all her crap on my kitchen table to "put away later". Drives me nuts. ESPECIALLY with her. She's the WORST. When you enter my house, you step through a front room, enter a hallway and turn right to enter the kitchen where (of course) the table is, or you can turn left with a quick right and smack into Shelby's door. If you were to measure, I'd be willing to bet it's equal distance from the hall doorway to my kitchen table or to Shelby's room.
A rational person might think it would make sense for her to just drop things into her room. But, no, Shelby is FOREVER slinging her things on my table. She drops her keys there. She drops her SHOES on the table. Books, earrings, candy, IPod. If it is in her grimy paws, it lands on my table.
Don't think for a second that she is just dropping her stuff off for a moment and eventually will gather it up and place it in her room. No, it stays and stays and stays and stays. There are times she will drop her stuff on the table, TURN AROUND and head to the bathroom that is RIGHT BY HER ROOM. ARRRRRRRRRRGH!
I yell, we squabble. I tell her my table is NOT her closet. She lamely tells me she is going to get to it in a minute. WHATEVER.
So when that summer day hit and there were flip flops, towels, sunglasses, and sun screen flung on my table it crossed my mind to beat her within an inch of her life. I know you've seen the movies where a character is SUPREMELY upset and has a moment where their imagination takes over and they visualize themselves doing unspeakable damage to whomever crossed their path. I experienced that.
Instead of extreme use of violence, I opted to put all her stuff on her bed. One of the items that I grabbed was an old blue bath towel. It's not ours. I didn't know who it belonged to, didn't care. Shelby could get it back to WHOEVER and NOT put it on the table.
A couple of days later...that ugly towel was back on the table. Does this girl EVER learn? I put it back in her room. Later that day? You guessed it. It was back on the table. This time, Shelby was in her room when I discovered it, so I picked it up and flung it at her and told her to PUT IT AWAY. Brat.
She flung it back at me and said she didn't know who the towel belonged to, so I could put it out with the swim towels. What?
Game on. I waited until Shelby was gone and slipped into her closet and stuck it inside one of her sweatshirts she had hanging up. A couple of weeks later, she went to wear that sweatshirt and the towel was in it. I was quite proud of how ingenious I was in making sure that SHE dealt with her own crap. A few weeks later I found the towel in one of my drawers. WHAT THE CRUD?
I hid it in her car. I found it in some of my belongings.
I waited for Christmas. I wrapped the towel in a very pretty package and the family howled with laughter when she opened her "gift." Spring came and I went to the basement to pull out my summer clothes. (I alternate clothes in my closet according to the season because there just isn't enough room for everything.) I opened one of the totes and there was that DANG towel.
I can't imagine my "lesson" has sunk in and I can't fathom either one of us conceding victory. We're both pretty stubborn that way. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when I enter the pearly gates, I'll be carting the stupid towel with me. I'll probably be swearing the whole time I'm walking up the path to greet my maker. But, THANK GOODNESS! At least I know that HE'LL understand. After all, HE did this. HE created this stubborn, smart, funny, beautiful girl, and then he turned her loose on ME!
Until that time, I only have one thing to say..."Hey Shelby, TAG! YOU'RE IT!"
No comments:
Post a Comment