One of the many things no one told me about becoming a parent is that everything would go missing.
It started with things from my purse that didn’t so much disappear, but were taken out and never made their way back. Like pens. Oftentimes my 6-year-old likes to draw, or write, or make up math problems while we’re in the vehicle, so he’ll ask if I have a pen. I end up digging through my purse and finding one, handing it back to him, and then it’s gone for life. Never to be seen again.
I don’t know where in my SUV it gets swallowed up – all I know is that when I’m out in the world and I need a pen, I dig through my purse to no avail. Do you know how difficult it is to be a newspaper reporter/editor and never have a pen handy?
Another item from the purse that gets syphoned away is Chapstick – but that’s more so because once the child asks to use mine, I don’t really want it back.
Around the house, it’s the most random things that go missing.
At the holiday season, I purposely didn’t buy Scotch tape because I knew we had a bunch of it in the “junk” drawer. So, one day after I gathered all the gifts that need to be wrapped, and the wrapping paper, bows, cards, etc., I went to said junk drawer, pulled it open, and started rummaging through it.
Batteries, a screwdriver, some pencils that have never been sharpened, a coupon that expired four years ago … no tape. Huh?
I checked a few other places, but found nothing. And then some kind of intuition had me checking the bookcase area in the playroom where Mikey’s craft stuff is piled up in a giant heap, and there I found several plastic Scotch tape carcasses – all empty.
When I asked the suspect what on earth happened to all the tape, he showed me the various creations he makes and explained that such masterpieces required a lot of “stick.”
While I was there, I also found all the scissors.
Recently, I was in my “at home office,” aka the desk in the corner of the basement that houses my computer, trying to do some billing paperwork for this very newspaper. Sometimes Mikey comes down when my husband and I both have to work (his “home office” is also down there), and Mikey will draw or otherwise entertain himself at one of our desks.
I needed to paperclip some affidavits to some printed emails. I reached into the little bowl that holds all the paperclips that I am constantly reusing, plucked one out, and as I pulled it up, it was attached to another, and another and another… I pulled up an entire string of paperclips that, my child later explained, he fashioned into a chain.
I am still unclipping them as I need them.
Next, I reached for the Post-It notes that I use to indicate who is paid, and I saw that the top sticky note had some sort of Pokémon drawn on it in Sharpie. Cute.
I tore that off and saw the next note was also drawn on.
Flipping through the entire stack, I realized there was not a clean one left. It’s like one of those “motion picture” things where if you flip it really quick it looks like the characters are moving.
While I appreciate the future artist in him, I’d really like to be able to get my work done.
The most recent phenomenon was the disappearance of our slippers – mine and my husband’s. Now, I noticed that my old slippers went missing at the beginning of the winter, but since they were almost worn-out anyway, I simply asked Santa for a new pair, which he delivered on.
Recently, I couldn’t find them. No problem, I just stole my husband’s. But the other morning I couldn’t find his either!
A day went by where I figured “they must be around here somewhere,” and that they were simply blending in with all the crap laying around the house, but then my husband came down the hallway asking, “Have you seen my slippers? I can’t even find my old ones.” (He also got a new pair from Santa.)
It was a real head-scratcher.
After a day of scouring, and cleaning up the house – BTW we found a long-lost baseball cap mixed in with his Bakugan toys, and Play-Dough creations under the couch – I was in my son’s room hanging up his Boy Scouts shirt and, when I opened up his closet, found six – SIX – pairs of slippers in there! Two pairs were mine, two pairs were my husband’s, and two pairs were Mikey’s.
When I asked why he was hoarding our slippers, he simply said, “I needed some for my stuffies.”
Ohhhh. OK, then.
Holly Crocco is editor of the Putnam County Times/Press and mother of an almost-7-year-old. She can be reached at editorial@putnampresstimes.com.
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