213. Petty revenge

Mothers - and fathers - probably know the feeling. The feeling you get when you have teenagers at home and suddenly daily mundane things become heavy burdens no-one can handle:

- breakfast crumbs not wiped off the table

- empty milk bottles left on the side - or worse - in the fridge

- clean folded items left stranded 

- dirty stinky items left stranded

- lights on where not needed and never turned off

- ...

The list could go on and on. We, responsible adults, sometimes dare to comment. Our comments are always guided by logic and reason and concern for the well-being of the entire family, motivated by a thorough mastering of modern parenting methods.

‘Can you put these plates in the dishwasher?’

But it is like getting the nuclear codes right first go.

‘Why should I? These are not my plates! I haven’t even had any food! X (name of random sibling) has been in the kitchen all morning, why don’t you ask her?’

So we look around to see what we have missed (because we must have missed something) and thus inadvertently catch X’s eye.

‘Why are you looking at me? Are you implying that I did use those plates? Because I did not! And Y (name of sibling wrongly blamed in the plate gate) knows it! Why doesn’t she admit that she used those plates? Just because she’s too lazy to put them away!’

‘That’s just not true! I’m just in the door! How could it be me?’

Etc.

We, parents, depending on our energy levels, either launch into full battle and call the four of them down and sit them around the dinner table and ask them to give us their (brief) version of the events and then we make them sit for a while until we give our verdict. Dear reader, I confess that I have been and still am an adept of this educational method over the years. As they sit there, quiet and giving each other the death stare, I tell them meaningful things:

‘OK. Fine. Time out. You be quiet and you just sit there and reflect upon your behaviour.’

I always think I should take a picture of them because they are all together there around the big table and they are still. I take mental notes that I will record for further reference in the blank pages at the end of our precious book Infallible Parenting Methods.

These days however, we tend to just let them fight it out. The consequences are that for the next week, fortnight, months, years even, we will have to be reminded of the unfairness of the whole process.

‘No way I am doing these cups! Remember when I did the plates back when X refused to do them? And I had to do them because Mum and Dad were just so protective about poor little baby of the family?’

Etc.

So when I saw today that my son was happily taking the dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them away in the cupboard I just kept quiet and pretended nothing was out of the ordinary. When he got to the cutlery drawer he shouted:

‘WHO does that? This is so annoying! Honestly, what is it with this family that they can’t tell a spoon from a fork!’

He moaned and groaned about this (not unlike his mother) and then exclaimed again:

‘And look! This is so dirty! Honestly! And what is all this?’

He was saying this as he took out useless bits - that I am certain are in every kitchen drawer: a lone plastic fork, a lone broken bamboo spoon, a beer top, a tiny cork from a long lost fancy bottle of olive oil from Italy, shells (shells?), a broken cocktail stirrer with the name of a fancy rooftop bar on it back from the days when the parents had a life, a bay leaf and a bit of yellow string. He took it all out and binned the lot, then took the inside of the drawer out and emptied it out completely, got a cloth and cleaned it all out!!! I kept quiet half from fear that he was going to stop and half from a vague, faint guilty feeling. He finished the job by sorting out the spoons from the forks from the knives then shut the drawer and left the kitchen still shaking his head in disbelief.

‘Where does all that **** comes from?’

‘Language! Please!’ I shouted, happy to regain some of my adulthood.

The truth is I was feeling a little responsibility for the mess in that drawer. Worse. I was the one who could not tell her forks from her spoons. Worse. I was now doing this regularly since I had discovered that it did annoy everyone and especially the male members of the family.