Who thought that putting zip-off legs on little kids pants was a good idea? It’s not like they are on safari and need to carry a canoe across a river. I’ve been holding up the bottom of somebody’s pants in front of the classroom for the last two days now asking, “Whose is this?” They don’t remember unless they’re standing there in boots and shorts with zippers around the bottom and you‘re staring at their kneecaps.
Now that winter is almost over and we can look to spring, be sure to go to your child’s school and check out the lost and found. It’s absolutely confounding what kids don’t realize they’re missing. How do you walk home in eight inches of snow with only one shoe and not notice?
If you plan to insulate your soon to be greener home this summer, don’t go out and buy costly materials. Why, you could cover the better part of a four bedroom colonial attic with all the mittens, jackets, scarves, and snow pants laying in internment just outside the office. How many people can claim they have Land’s End insulation? And that's just the non-perishable items. Hazmat suits are donned to empty the lunchboxes and bags that have been buried so long the now liquid contents even make dumpsters hold their noses.
But before you say that final good-bye to the season, stop in the office and ask to see the lost and found drawer. There you will possibly find the glasses your child said he lost at church, the watch you bought your kid so he’d get home on time, the heirloom necklace your little girl wore because it made her look pretty and the cell phone you’ve been looking for since your sweet little boy snuck it out in his backpack just under the Star Wars guys. In haphazard display will be pagers, ipods, video games, inhalers and the clarinet you said would get lost if she didn’t take better care of it. It’s a Vegas pawn shop without the pawn or the Vegas part.
Next winter, parents, don’t bother with the nice clothes. I know you mean well, but it won’t be worth it. They’ll just come to represent your kinda crazy part. You’ll find yourself taking inventory every morning and afternoon to see if all the pieces are still there. When something is missing, it will take on double the meaning because everything in winter comes in twos. When one of those items gets lost it renders the other useless. Hearing your child trying to defend himself by saying, “I can wear this one,“ while holding up the left hand glove just makes you madder. You’ll find yourself headfirst at the bottom of a wooden box, swimming through two feet of clothing orphans, throwing onto the floor other parents’ kids’ clothes with both hands, the hands you used to write your master’s thesis. See what you’ve become.
Oh by the way, the forecast is for snow.
