WHY are boys such murder on clothes?!???
Can you hear the pathetic frustrated sob catching in my throat? That painful sound of acknowledged defeat, the sound of complete and hopeless bewilderment at HOW the boy could have destroyed yet ANOTHER pair of jeans so soon, the sound of a woman sinking ever deeper into the ever growing mountains of ripped, and stained, and moldy, and repeatedly re-ripped clothing - which must somehow be made ready to wear in public again, or replaced with new clothing items (thrift stores, here we come AGAIN)? Can you hear that?
And he comes to me again with that look of, "um, Mom, oops," and I just hope it's not the brand new pair of jeans/Sunday slacks/shoes/polo shirt/etc. "please, please, please let it be something he's nearly outgrown," I pray, "let it be something he's already stained/ripped. Don't let it be something which actually didn't have any stains or rips yet. Please, please, please ..." but no such luck.
I hold it together somewhat well - I ask him the annoying questions he doesn't want to hear, "how? when? what?" but I really try to ask with a calm voice this time - I should know better though, the answers will just upset me more, and besides - he's always completely bewildered as to how it happened.
I walk away, I count to ten, I think of other things, I do other things. Then after a while, I notice he's squirting something in the shower with the shower hose - I investigate - it's his new, nice, fits him real well, only a tiny barely noticed stain, found on clearance for $3.00 polo shirt - it's been wet and sitting in a plastic bag over 24 hours.
I'm okay, I breathe. He's using cold water which is good - cold first to get stains that need cold water to remove them, them warm/hot to work on the other stains and the mold it seems to be starting - and he's using Dawn dish soap, also good, at least he's using some common sense about stain removal if not about actually caring for the clothes before the stains are created.
I walk away again, I start gathering stray laundry especially things that can wash with that shirt, and I find a pair of the boy's shorts - re-ripped in the back side! AAARRRGGGHHH!
I give up, I head for the computer to blog and whine to other moms who will understand and sympathize about the injustice done me by a clothing murdering son, and I see something left "open" on the screen. This is what he'd been reading before he suddenly remembered that shirt in that bag and went to rescue it. Now how can you be truly upset with a boy who reads the prophet's words in his free time on a Summer night?
